Just So You Know
by flawlesspeasant
Summary: AU: When Jo moves to Seattle to start her new career as a doctor, she's excited to put her past behind her and start making new memories. But falling in love wasn't in her plans, and especially not with a married man...
1. Chapter 1

**A/N:** I wrote this story six years ago and I'm only reposting it because a few people on tumblr asked me to. Leave reviews if you want to, but please don't expect a reaction and reply from me. I don't check this account anymore and I don't write for Jolex anymore.

~flawlesspeasant.

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"_Some of these conditions could be severe from far southern Washington, with heavy thunderstorms moving up into the Olympia and eventually the Seattle area. Expect heavy thunderstorms throughout the week with highs and lows of about 60 and 40 respectively. Tuesday night, we're generally watching lighter showers move on through the area, quickly passing through and expected to clear out by Friday morning. Going into the weekend, expect cloudy but damp air with a humidity rating of about 70%. We should be back to the warm, summertime weather by the end of next week. Now…"_

As soon as I hear the weatherwoman begin to speak about today's forecast, I leisurely push the volume button twice on my remote to turn up my old, tube television set. I'm beginning to get used to the wet, murky Seattle weather by now. Granted I've only been living here for a little over a month, but it doesn't take much to get used to a place that pretty much rains more than it stays dry. I know for a fact that I should probably dress for rain today, but on the off chance that I can in fact, show some skin… I'll listen to the weather forecast for the day anyway.

I reach down with my hands and pull my thick, wool blanket up to rest underneath my neck. Now I know for a fact that when I take this blanket off my body and decide to get my lazy ass up out of this bed for the day, I'm going to have red blotches all over my arms and probably my chin; but I guess I don't much care. I'm not allergic to very many things, but it's just my luck to actually be allergic to the warmest thing possible. I take my chances with the wool because the alternative is to wake up frostbitten not because I'm stupid, by the way. I know I'm allergic to wool and I know that I'll probably be scratching myself for the rest of the day. I know all of this.

Reluctantly, I stick one of my arms out into the bitterly cold air of my bedroom to grab my cell phone off the power-cord it's been on all night. I push the "ok" button on my phone to make it light up. I guess you could probably say that my cell phone is the nicest thing I've ever gotten for myself. I didn't buy it or anything like that, so needless to say that it's not one of those smartphones that you see the TV ads about. I picked it up from the dollar store a couple years back. I just decided that it was time for me to get a cell phone so I just grabbed it one day. The only things I really deem necessary to spend my money on are those little reloadable cards to refill the minutes on it. It's a crappy little Trac-Phone but it makes calls and it does what it needs to do, for the most part.

Of course, I don't have any missed calls or missed text messages when I check it. I almost never do. For one, it's not like I have very many people that give a damn about me enough to text me or call me; and for two, I've never been very good at making friends anyway. It sort of goes both ways though. When I was in college I had a roommate that I've never spoken so much as three words to, and that's the god-honest truth. I'm not really a social person and that's honestly the way I like it. I could probably use some friends in my life but it's not like making friends is actually a priority of mine.

The clock on my cell phone boasts a very early "5:25 a.m." reading. I toss my phone onto the very limited free space I have on my twin-sized bed next to me and take the only blanket off of my body. To say that I'm tired would be a major understatement. Hell, even the term "exhausted" would be pushing it. The thing is that I can't really sleep, though. I don't sleep much. I never have been much of a sleeper and I probably won't ever be. I think the last time I slept through the night was when I was fifteen. I've been walking around like a sleep-deprived zombie for the last twelve years, so it's pretty much a normalcy to me at this point. I've learned to function on less than two hours of sleep at a time and I shit-you-not when I say that I think it should be a sport in the Olympics to be able to do that. It's a real talent.

I roll over onto my side and put both of my feet down onto the cold linoleum floor of my bedroom. I use my arms and pull myself completely out of my bed. My box-spring broke during the move here and I still have yet to replace it, so I've been dealing on a mattress on the floor. I merely tiptoe for no reason at all over to the black garbage bag I keep my clothes in and kneel down to look inside it for something to throw on. I'm not quite sure what I should be looking to wear. It's my first day. Should I dress up real nice and stuff or should I just slum it in a pair of jeans? I just wish I knew what everybody else was going to wear. _What if I'm the only girl?_

I drag out my best pair of blue jeans and hold them up to examine them using the crappy amount of light I'm getting from my TV. They're not too wrinkled so I guess I don't have to worry about ironing wrinkles out of them. I toss the jeans over my shoulder onto my bed and keep looking. I grab the first pair of clean panties I stumble across and throw them with the jeans. I only own two bras, so as soon as I find one, I throw it with the jeans and the underwear. I find a pair of socks and toss them with the other clothing articles I dug out. I just need to find a damn shirt.

I reach deep inside the bag and pull out exactly what I was looking for; a dark green, long-sleeved, button-down shirt with a pocket on the left breast. I rock back off my knees and onto my feet. I stand up and go over to the light switch. I fling the light on and squeeze my eyelids shut tight as my eyes ache from the sudden light. I untie the draw strings on the pair of sweatpants I wore to bed last night and take them off. I can still get one more wear out of them before they become dirty, so rather than throw them into the dirty laundry garbage bag, I toss them onto my bed. I take off the underwear I have on and put them inside the dirty laundry bag.

I do kind of want to take a shower, but I'll just change my underwear instead. I'd rather take a shower later on tonight after work instead of this morning. I can only afford to shower once a day so I'll choose wisely. I doubt that I'll get to get my hands dirty today, but on the off chance that I actually do get to do some cutting, I'll save my shower for tonight. I step into the clean underwear I set out for myself and secure them on my waist. I snatch up the pair of jeans I put out and shove my legs into them. I button them around my waist and zip them up. I grab the rim of my t-shirt and take it off as well. I grab the bra I threw out and strap it around my chest. I align the cups with my boobs and put my arms through the straps. I yank on the green shirt and pull my hair through the head-hole. I sit down on my bed and start pulling the socks on my feet.

I get back up off my bed and tiredly stalk to my bathroom. I flip on the light and go over to the sink. Out of instinct, I glance up to the corner of my bathroom to the spot right above my toilet. It looks like it's stayed the same for the most part. I don't think it's grown anymore. Once I monitor the black spot, I twist the nozzle and turn on the faucet so I can brush my teeth. My very first paycheck will be going towards buying myself a new bed. I've already decided that I'm going to get myself a brand new bed with bedding that doesn't make me have allergic reactions. But if I have money left over, I swear I'll hire someone to scrape out the mold that's growing in my bathroom. I swear I will.

My apartment really does suck. But the thing is…I'm aware of this. It's one thing for your living arrangements to suck really badly and for you to not even know it. See, I know that my apartment isn't even worth the $150 I pay in rent every month. I KNOW this. But the alternative is going back to sleeping in my car and I'd rather just not do that. Plus, it's really not all that horrible. At least I have a roof over my head, you know? Some people don't even have that. Sure, there's mold growing in my bathroom. Sure I have about thirteen mousetraps set all through the place. And okay, I admit that I refuse to take a shower without flip-flops on my feet. But it's really not that awful. It could be worse. Like…I could be sleeping in my car.

After I finish brushing my teeth and washing my face up, I snatch my makeup bag off the back of the toilet. Normal people would probably look at me like I'm an idiot for putting makeup on just to go practice medicine all day, but seriously. I'm not really a normal person and I totally get that first impressions are everything. I'm not exactly the prettiest model in the magazine, so any amount of makeup really does help my case. I'm not ugly or anything though. Sighing, I pull my eyelid downwards so I can apply my eyeliner as flawlessly as possible. I yank my hair out of the ponytail I slept with it in last night and shudder when it topples down to the middle of my back. I run a quick comb through it just so my part is correct and put the comb down. When I'm done with my makeup and stuff, I step back and look at myself in the mirror.

_I don't think they'll be able to tell. _I turn off the light to my bathroom and go back to my bedroom. I really hope they won't be able to tell, because that's honestly the last thing I need from people. Have you any idea how truly annoying that is? Because once people find out that the reason you're so skinny is because you literally can't afford to eat much, they start to feel bad for you. And when they figure out that the reason you wore that pair of jeans twice in one week is that you only own three pairs of jeans, they start to treat you different. Then it's completely game over when the cat gets out of the bag about you living in your car. I've been through this before and I can singlehandedly tell you that pity parties aren't fun…especially when they pertain to your job. So with that being said, I don't think they'll be able to tell that I live in a shit-hole. I think I dressed well enough to cover that up.

I push the "off" button on my TV and stomp my feet into my shoes. I stuff my cell phone into the back pocket of my jeans and grab the only jacket I own. I slip my arms through the armholes of my jacket and zip it all the way up. I'm not sure if it's raining outside just yet but just in case it is, I pull my hood over my head as well. I walk into my kitchen and grab my car keys off the counter beside my refrigerator. I unlatch the latch-lock I put on my front door at night, unlock the main lock and open up the door. I step out into the main hallway of the apartment complex and as soon as I step out, I'm overwhelmed by the scent of some type of drug. It's probably pot that I'm smelling. It's not that the junkies I live here with aren't into heavier things than marijuana, because I'm sure that I've caught at least ten people within the last month shooting up behind the dumpsters. It's just that pot is the only thing they're bold enough to smoke in public. I don't think the cops really care that this is basically a crack-house at this point.

I wrap my hand around the railing and walk down the small flight of steps that lead out into the parking lot. I go over to my beat down, gold Grand Am and unlock the door. I really do try to take care of my car. It's an old, 1990 Honda Accord, so it's pretty rundown. But it's mine and it's literally the only thing I have, so I really do try hard to take care of it. I start my car and back out of the parking space I was in and start driving in the direction of work. I can't really tell if I'm excited to start or nervous or both. As I approach a red traffic light, my hands tap along in time to the song that's playing. I look both ways before I turn right at the red light and sing along in my head to the song that I can hear that's playing from one of my CDs. _ To roads to walk down…one road to choose… Thinking over the things that you said, I'm thinking over…the things that you said. _I turn and speed past the space needle. I still get a little bit lost sometimes coming through here to get to the hospital, but I made a mental note to go past the space needle and make a sharp left.

I make my sharp left turn and continue through town until I finally see the sign that indicates that I didn't get lost this time. **Seattle Grace-Mercy West Hospital**, I made it without getting lost. I wander through the workers' parking lot and find an empty space right next to a big red pickup truck. I park my car and step out after locking it up. There's nobody else in this parking lot with me which actually scares the shit out of me. Either I'm really late or I'm early. I'm leaning towards late though, because if I were early, there wouldn't be a lot of cars in this parking lot. _Shit. Late on your first day? So much for first impressions. _I stuff my car keys in my jacket pocket and hurry over to the entrance.

As soon as I get under the pavilion-like structure that covers the main doors, I take my hood down. I walk around towards the back to the workers' entrance and open up the heavy metal door. We had orientation last week where they showed us where to go and where to clock in and stuff to start our shifts. I know I'm supposed to go to the surgical wing to the time clock so I can punch in and then I have to go to the locker rooms. I think I remember where everything is. I go to an elevator and push the button to get it to open. I glance down into my pocket at my cell phone to check the time. It's 6:37 in the morning. No, I'm really not that late…so why wasn't there anybody else in the lot?

The surgical wing is on the third floor I believe, so I push the third floor button and stand in the back of the elevator and wait. If I'm being honest, I really hate elevators. I just think they feel weird. The way they shift under your feet and clank and make you feel all weird? Yeah, I hate that. I'm not one of those people that have an irrational phobia of getting stuck in them or anything like that. I just don't like the way they make you feel like gravity is working against you. That's seriously just weird. The elevator door screeches when it opens up again and I walk out of it. I'm supposed to clock in for my shift and go straight back to the locker rooms and wait for further instructions. I remember during orientation when they showed us how to clock in, so I head over to the time clock so I can punch in. I must admit that I'm confused on how to do it, because when they showed us how to clock in they said that we have to slide our ID badges and I don't have one yet… and I don't even see anyone I can ask for help. Great.

I stand over by the clock and just wait around. I'm starting to wish I never came here. My nerves are starting to get the best of me which isn't good for me. I don't think I've ever felt so out of place in my life. I turn my head so I can actually look at the time clock and see that the time reads "6:40." I don't want to risk being any later than I already appear to be, so I just nix the whole punching in idea and trot back to the locker rooms that they showed us to during orientation. I grab the handle and yank the door open. It's loud in here…and the noise is the first thing I notice.

As soon as I turn the corner, I'm met with a couple shirtless boys and girls that aren't wearing any pants. I silently find the locker I claimed during orientation and open it up. It was empty the last time I saw it but now it has two pairs of light powder blue scrubs and an ID badge waiting for me. I pick up the scrub top and look at it. I marked my size down as a small but the more I look at it, I think I might have needed a medium. I put the top down on the bench in front of me and take off my jacket.

A smaller, dark-skinned girl with a mound of curly black hair on her head stakes her claim on the locker right next to mine. She takes off the windbreaker jacket she had on and shoves it inside her locker. She was smarter than me, because she wore a jacket with a tank top underneath of it and a pair of jogging pants. She must've known that we were going to be immediately changing. Keeping my back turned away from her, I grab the bottom of the green shirt I put on this morning and fold it up nicely. Behind me, the girl sucks her teeth and as instinct, I turn my head to see what she sucked her teeth at. She holds up her scrub top and looks genuinely disappointed in it. She appears to just suck it up though, and she puts her scrub top over her head. It's like a dress on her. It's baggy and really long.

I start by putting my top on too. It goes on with ease over my head and my arms fit nicely through the head-hole. But I'm a little bit chestier than I'm willing to admit. I'm not really as petite as I look from a distance. I have pretty rounded curves and while my stomach is perfectly flat, I have these gigantic c-cup boobs that are weirdly, naturally perky and they sit at an awkwardly high position on my chest…and my scrub top won't fit over them. _Fantastic. _I use one of my arms to squish my boobs down and my free hand to yank my shirt down.

"It's so hard to get the sizes of these things right." My locker neighbor makes small talk with me. She's busy trying to adjust her entirely-too-big scrub top so that it doesn't hang off her shoulders. She holds her hands out to me. "Need some help?"

"…Actually, maybe we should trade." I stop trying to force the shirt over my chest and just look at her. She's actually quite pretty. Her dark brown skin is smooth and ideally flawless and her black, plastic-rimmed glasses make her look so sophisticated and smart. Her wildly curly hair really suits her thin, delicate face. She's so pretty that it makes me not even want to look at her, if you know what I mean. "You look like you need a smaller size and I clearly need a bigger one. Is yours bigger than a small?"

"Yeah, mine's a medium." She takes off her top just as quickly as she put it on and hands it to me. I forcefully pull the small top back over my head and hand it to her. "…Steph, by the way." After she puts her new shirt on, she offers her hand out to me. I pull my hair through the head-hole of my new top and shake her hand. "Steph Edwards… err, Stephanie, I mean." She chuckles at her own ineptitude and tosses a loose, twisty curl out of her face. "I forgot how 'unprofessional' it is to introduce myself as Steph." She states, putting air-quotes around the word unprofessional.

"Um…" I don't know why, but my mind goes blank for a minute. I can't remember my own name. "…J…Jo….sephine. Josephine." _Get it together. Stop stuttering so much. _"Jo… Jo Wilson." I put my tongue in my cheek and inhale a high-pitched breath. "Jo… it's short for Josephine, but nobody ever calls me Josephine unless I'm in some kind of trouble or something. So call me Jo." I take my jeans off and fold them neatly into a pile so I can stuff them in my locker. Stephanie follows my lead and takes her own pants off as well. "…Who's your resident?" I pick up my scrub pants and examine them to see if I'll need to trade these off with Stephanie as well.

"Yang." She slips her legs through her pants and secures them on her waist. She ties the drawstrings on them and adjusts them quite nicely. "Yours?"

"Kepner." I tie a bow in the drawstrings to my pants and sit down to put my shoes back on. "That's too bad. It would've been nice to know at least one person in my group." I fling my hair over my shoulder and shove my left foot into my shoe. "Guess I'll see you around lunch time or something."

"Yeah, totally." She shuts her locker and goes on about her business. I finish tying my shoe and do the same.

**Alex's Point of View.**

"Who's presenting?" I glance down at my watch then back up to the group that I'm responsible for. They all look at me like I just spoke a foreign language to them. I think I was pretty clear though. "Did they not teach you this in school?" They still look at me like they have no idea what I'm talking about. I'm not sure that I'm cut out for this whole teaching thing. I suck my teeth at the idiots and shove the chart into the arms of a short, thin girl with shoulder-length blonde hair. "You…" I mumble. I'm not sure what her name is and I really just don't care. "When we present, we—"

"Maya Anderson, 31 years old…currently recovering from a hernia repair. Showing signs of post op infection." Before I can finish yelling at my group, Kepner comes into the room with her group. I guess I'm grateful that she spared my idiots from getting yelled at, but she's kind of stealing my teaching moment. Apes doesn't annoy me as much as she used to annoy me. Ever since she got with Jackson she's toned it down a whole lot. Jackson and Ape do a very good job of balancing each other out for that matter. So because she's not totally annoying me anymore, I just let her continue. "Can anybody tell me what the signs of post op infection for hernia repair are?"

Her idiots look just as clueless as mine, if not more. I glare at my own group. "How about you guys? Any of you know the signs of a post op infection for a hernia repair?"

"I'll give you guys the benefit of the doubt and say that you're all probably just nervous for your first day." April is much nicer to her idiots than I am to mine. "Redness, swelling, drainage from the incision sight… those are all indicators of a post op infection." She pushes a couple buttons on the electronic chart she has in her hand and smiles at the patient. I must admit that I've always been kind of jealous of Ape's bedside manners. She just has that soft edge that I can only dream of sometimes. "Please excuse us. I don't know if Dr. Karev told you, but this is a teaching hospital and today we just got our brand new interns… we're supposed to be training them."

"Of course." The patient pleasantly smiles and nods her head.

"Now can anybody tell me how we monitor and treat a post op infection from a hernia repair?" April turns to both her idiots and mine. You know what? I'm cool with her teaching my idiots. Less work for me. "Go 'head." April nods her head at a girl in the back that raised her hand. I have so many names to learn. I don't really feel like learning everyone's names because chances are, they're not all gonna make it anyway. A good bit of them will screw up and be out of here sooner or later. I guarantee by the time this is all done and over there will only be about six of them left here.

"Check the incision periodically…once every three hours. A dose of antibiotics intravenously and constant bandage changes." The girl that answered Ape's question came from her own group. She's kind of tall. She towers at a nice height above the rest of the idiots she's standing beside and she looks like she's scared out of her wits. But she's right with the treatment plan, so I don't know why she's so scared. She looks like she's too good to be here. She looks like she should be a nurse as opposed to a surgical intern. I've had my fair share of models, so I know one when I see one. I can guess how she made it through med school. I won't judge her; I'm just saying that it's pretty obvious that she takes her clothes off quite often. I have pretty good radar for girls like that.

"You." I point at her and her eyes grow about two sizes bigger. "Maybe you could teach my interns a thing or two." I snatch the chart back off the short chick I gave it to and fold it closed since April already rounded on her. I snap my fingers at them to get them to follow me and they do. I shove the chart in the holder that's hanging on the back of the door and walk past the nurses' station. "Go down to the pit and see if anybody down there needs your help. Don't kill anyone." I mumble to my group and they all scatter like cockroaches in kitchen lights.

I grab an electronic chart from the charging station that sits right beside the nurses' station and check to see if I can round on any patients on my own. I'm really not cut out to teach anybody anything. I couldn't even teach myself anything when I was an intern, how the hell does anybody expect me to teach them? I lean against the charging station and just take a minute. This is going to be a long, long, long day.

**Jo's Point of View.**

"Have you seen the plastics flunky? The one that pals around with Dr. Sloan all the time? Talk about EYE. CANDY." As soon as I walk over to the table that Stephanie is sitting at in the cafeteria area, she starts to talk to me. I'm not sure if I'd call Stephanie a friend just yet. She's just the only person I've made actual contact with today. Well, she, Dr. Kepner and Dr. Karev are the only ones I've made contact with. But Stephanie is the only one that I'm not scared out of my mind to talk back to. "I didn't quite catch his name… but he's incredibly good-looking."

I sit down and stir my straw in my plastic cup full of soda. I'm hungry but I really can't afford to buy anything to eat here at the moment. I'll eat when I go home later. "Dr. Avery, yeah." I take a sip of my drink and kick my feet up on a free chair across from me. My feet are so tired and I've only been on them for six hours. I have six more hours to go. "I'm not sure, but I think him and my resident are a thing. They were kissing today… not unless that's just a casual thing that people do here…"

"Of course he has a girlfriend or whatever. Of course. You don't get to be that good-looking and single. It doesn't work that way." She's busy eating her French fries two at a time. "So anyway, Dr. Yang is a GOD. I saw her do a mitral valve replacement in a half hour today. That's unheard of!"

"…You got to sniff the inside of an OR today?" I slide my cup away from me and just look at her with the purest amount of jealousy.

"Hell no!" She starts to laugh at me as if I said the silliest thing she's ever heard of. "She didn't actually let us go in… but she let us watch from the gallery. She's amazing. I think I'm in love with my resident."

"So which one is it? Her or Dr. Avery?"

"Both." She winks and I start to laugh right along with her. "You can't sit here and tell me that he is not the most beautiful thing you've ever seen, though. He's beautiful…"

"Ehh… he's okay." I shrug my shoulders.

"What are you, gay?" She playfully taps me in my shoulder.

"No! I just… I don't really think he's THAT good-looking. He's attractive, but not THAT attractive. I've seen cute guys around here, sure. But I'm not really here for cute boys. Especially cute guys that I have no chance with."

"Who do you have your eyes on?"

"…Dr. Kepner took us on a tour of the hospital and I saw this cute guy in OB. He was pretty…" I press my lips into a hard line and try to keep from busting out in laughter. "He was pretty damn sexy." I shrug. "And this other doctor that I saw today was cute, but he was kind of… douchey, I think. But all the hot guys are douches, so…"

"Do either of your cute guys have names?"

"…I don't know the guy from OB. I caught a glimpse of him. And the other guy is…" I lick my lips and pick up my Styrofoam cup again. "I dunno, I guess Dr. Karev isn't that bad looking. He's cute." I take a long, drowned out sip of my soda and wait for Steph's reaction.

"….Yeah, you know that guy's married, right?" She shoots me down. I look at her with a puzzled look on my face. "Dr. Karev is so married… did you really think he wasn't? There's a blonde girl that works up in Derm. I heard through the grapevine that she's his wife… or soon-to-be wife. He's either married or engaged, one of the two."

"…Blonde girl that works up in Dermatology… never seen her." I shrug. "He seemed like an asshole to me anyway. Either he's an ass or he woke up on the wrong side of the bed today."

She offers me her half-eaten bag of potato chips that I gladly accept. "Well like you said… all cute guys are douchey."


	2. Chapter 2

"It should be illegal to be this exhausted." Before she even starts to put her street clothes back on, Stephanie immediately collapses down on the bench in front of our lockers and puts her head in her hands. I utter a soft snicker and open up my locker to grab the clothes I had on before I came here. "Go 'head and laugh but I'm being completely serious. I'm too young to be this tired." She pushes her curly hair back out of her face and sighs. We seem to be the only ones in the locker room at the moment. We were supposed to be off a couple hours ago, but both of our residents had to stay a little later to deal with post-op patients so we had to stay as well. "You think it'd be frowned upon if I just slept here?"

"Why would you want to?" I ask her, giggling. I take my jeans out of my locker and put them down on the bench. As soon as I untie the drawstrings on my scrub pants, the locker room door opens and a guy walks through it. Just my luck that a boy just so happened to wander in here just as I was getting naked. "…Why would you want to?" I ask Stephanie again, redirecting my attention to the conversation we were having. "Wouldn't you rather sleep in your bed?"

The boy that came in here with us goes to the other side of the room and opens up his locker. Innocuously, my attention goes over to him. It's not that I think he's cute or anything of that nature; I just want to size up my competition. He has broad, stocky shoulders and muscles that boast the fact that he obviously works out. His skin is dark; lighter than Stephanie's but still dark. He sure looks like he means business. He's definitely not here to mess around. I think I like that.

"Of course I'd rather sleep in my bed. But I have to stay awake for the drive home before I make it to my bed." Stephanie takes off her shirt and grabs her jacket from her locker. "I only live ten minutes across town… and I don't know if I'm gonna make it." She jokes as she zips up her jacket.

"I feel you on that." I button my jeans then zip them up. I take off my shirt and fold it up neatly. "I don't even think I'm going to eat when I get home. I think I'm just going to jump in the shower and go right to sleep." I put my green shirt back on and adjust it on my body. I probably won't eat when I get home to be honest. I've been thinking all day about what I can possibly feed myself when I get home and I'm quite clueless. I don't have anything in my fridge except for a couple bottles of water. I don't have anything to eat at home. But whatever, it's not the first time I've gone to bed hungry. If I don't think about how hungry I am, the hunger eventually goes away.

I gingerly tuck my scrubs away in my locker and shut it. I grab my car keys off the bench in front of me and slide them on my ring finger for safe keeping. Just as I finish getting dressed, Stephanie finishes too. The boy that was in here with us walks quite fast to the door…like he's in a hurry to get out of here. "…That's Shane. He's like… super concentrated. He doesn't want to make friends or anything. He's all about the work." Steph grabs her own car keys and starts walking towards the door with me.

"I can respect that." I shrug my shoulders and push the door open. "He seems like he'd be super serious… that's why I didn't even bother talking to him." _Wow, that probably just made me sound like a super bitch. _"I… I mean, I'm not really that good at making friends anyway… so it's just like… why would I bother talking to someone that seems like they have no interest in getting to know me anyway?" I attempt to make the comment I just made sound a little less bitchy. I didn't mean to come off like that.

"You seem alright with making friends to me." Stephanie shrugs her shoulders at me and keeps walking. "Are you hard to get along with, Jo?" Her tone rises to an inquisitive manner. What an odd question to ask somebody…

"Me?" I stumble over my word choices a little bit. "I don't… I don't know? I don't think I am. I think I'm pretty easy to get along with." We both stop at the time clock and I slide my name badge through the slot to clock out first. "Is there a reason why you're asking me this?" I tuck my ID badge into my back pocket and wait for her to clock out to see what her answer is.

She slides her badge through the slot too and starts walking with me again. "Not really. I was just wondering. You seem like a pretty chill person but you said that you have a hard time making friends…so it just made me wonder if maybe you're secretly a bitch or something."

"…Oh." I tuck a loose strand of my hair behind my ear and glance over at her while we're walking through the surgical floor to get to the elevators. "…Do I look like a bitch? You can be honest… do I really come across as bitchy or unapproachable?"

"No… god, no." She shakes her head and her glasses wiggle when she does, which in turn, makes me crack a smile. "I men like… when I first saw you at the lockers this morning, I thought that you were probably a little bit stuck up because of the things I heard about you and the way you looked… but bitchy? No. I try not to judge a person's character before I've had the opportunity to talk to them."

"People are talking about me?" I step inside the elevator and lean against the wall. "Are they saying bad things?" _I tried so hard to make a positive impression on everybody, though. What does she mean by "the things she's heard about me"? _"Who was saying stuff?"

"You can calm down." She puts her hand up at me to chill me out as she pushes the first floor button with the hand she's not holding out. "It's nothing bad. It's the usual stuff… the trying to get to know coworkers kind of talk. Leah had just said that she heard that the brunette girl went to Harvard, that's all. Then hearing that you might've gone to Harvard made me think that maybe you're a little bit entitled and arrogant, but you're clearly not."

I just nod my head softly. "I did, though. I did go to Harvard…and Princeton." _Was that braggy? _"But I dunno… you tell me. Am I hard to get along with?" The elevator opens back up and lets us out on the first floor. In unison, we both step out of the elevator together and start walking towards the door that'll lead us directly out to the workers' parking lot.

"Harvard AND Princeton? What are you, a genius?"

"…Borderline." I nod and wink at her to signify that I'm just joking and I'm not that cocky and overconfident.

She genuinely laughs at my joke and playfully taps me on my shoulder. "You're definitely not hard to get along with. I'm finding it easy to like you." As if we're on the same wavelength, she follows me to the same quadrant of the parking lot and when she pushes the button on her keychain, the taillights on a silver Mercedes flash. _She's getting into a Mercedes and I'm getting into a beat up Grand Am. Embarrassing much? _"See you tomorrow?" Just as she gets to her car, she stops walking and turns to me. I keep walking to hide my harmless jealousy though.

"Yeah." I nod and glance off into the distance when I reach my car. She's only parked two cars down from me, so it's not like we're yelling across the parking lot at each other. I know I shouldn't be, but I can't help but be embarrassed that I'm about to drive off in my shitty little car while she's about to drive off in…that. "See you… first thing tomorrow morning." I push my key into the lock on my door and twist it. Sighing, I climb into my car and shut the door. I put my key in the ignition and just sit there for a second.

I've never been "jealous" of anyone's material things in my life before. I've been jealous, sure. But of the things that I know I should have but can't. I've never felt jealousy towards someone's greater fortune before. Maybe I'm not exactly jealous of Stephanie's bad ass car. Maybe I'm just a little bit embarrassed for myself because she's driving that and I'm driving this. Does that constitute as jealousy?

Drawing myself out of my nagging, senseless thoughts, I twist the key in the ignition and start my car. The engine chugs as it often does before it starts but this time, it just doesn't turn over. Before I even waste my energy getting irritated with it, I try again. Again, the engine chugs and refuses to turn over. "…You've gotta be fucking kidding me." I mumble to myself and twist the key again….still nothing. I huff and smack my hand against the steering wheel. _Should've known something was going to go wrong today. I've had way too good of a day. _I pull the key out of the ignition and take a couple deep breaths before I escalate.

"Please start…." _Am I really talking to a car? I think I've just reached a new low. _I shove the key back in and twist it. It chugs again then falls flat. "This is just fan-fucking-tastic." In my haste, I open up my door and get out. I bend down to the spot next to the driver's seat and pop the hood of it. I circle around to the front and look around at what I can kind of see through the hospital lights. It's pitch black out here with the exception of the lights coming off the blue and silver hospital sign. It's probably my battery that's giving me an issue. I've needed a new battery for about two years now but do you know how expensive those things run? I look around the parking lot. _And there's nobody here I can ask for a jump._

"Are you okay?" That familiar mellifluous voice calls out to me from out of the blue, which makes me jump clear out of my skin. When I turn my head around to see where she came from, I see her pulled up in the exit lane with her window rolled down to talk to me. The silver Mercedes is even more beautiful from this angle. "Do you want like… a ride home or something?"

"…I just need a jump." I lean against my shitty car and shove my tongue in my cheek. "It won't start." I really don't want to accept her ride home. I really, really, really don't want to. I just hate feeling like I owe somebody something, almost as much as I hate feeling like I need a favor. But I'm not really sure if I have a choice. I doubt she has jumper cables and even if she did, it's not like I know how to jump a car. _I'll just tell her that I already called somebody to come pick me up. That way I don't have to flat out reject her and she won't feel bad for leaving me. _"I already cal…" I stop myself and heave a hard sigh. _How the hell am I getting home without her? _"…Please?" I ask.

"Yeah, no problem. Come on." I hear the locks in her car shift when she unlocks the door for me. I slam down the hood of my junky car and grab my belongings out of the passenger's side. I guess I'm fine with leaving my car here for the night. It's not like somebody's gonna try to steal it. It's not worth a damn penny so honestly if they put forth the effort to steal it, they can just have it. Whatever.

I sling my purse over my shoulder and open up her car door. Very politely, I climb inside and put my seatbelt on. "Thank you." I put my purse between my legs and stressfully comb through my hair with my fingers. "My piece of shit car won't start and I don't really know anybody around here that would have jumper cables. I really ought to get a new battery…" Her car is just as nice on the inside as it is on the outside and that's the truth. "So thank you."

"It's really not a problem." She takes the gearshift out of park and puts it in drive. "I would've felt bad if I saw you while I was on my way home and I didn't ask if you were okay; especially since I actually know and like you." She speeds out of the parking lot and onto the main road that leads us out of hospital grounds. "If you were like… basically anybody else, I would've left you." She admits and I laugh at that. I like how blunt she is. "Does loud music bother you?"

"Not at all." I look out my window and gaze at the space needle. A month in Seattle and I'm still not used to how beautiful it is at night. When the skyline is all lit up and pretty? Yeah, I could just stare out the window all the time. It's just so pretty. As soon as I tell her that loud music doesn't bother me, she turns her radio up to a near deafening volume. And as if the bass of the song that's playing isn't enough to make the floor of the car shake, Stephanie playfully starts bobbing her head pretty hard and singing. I really, really like her. I just like how open she is.

She looks over and catches me staring at her. I wasn't staring to be nosy or anything; I was just trying to figure out exactly how she manages to be so laidback and easy going. "Don't judge me. This is how I unwind after long days." She shouts over the music but manages to keep her tone something that's still friendly and not at all demeaning. "Where do you live?" She asks.

I raise my voice so she can hear me over the music without having to adjust it for me. "You can just drop me off by the Seven Eleven downtown." I don't want to tell her that I live in the Ridgeview Apartments. I can only take but so much embarrassment for one day, so I'll just walk home from there. The Seven Eleven is literally up a hill and down the street from the apartments. I'll walk home.

"What?!" She lightheartedly giggles and keeps driving along down a straight road.

"I said drop me off at the Seven Eleven downtown!" I scream over the music.

"Oh!" She screams back and turns the radio up some more. _She's gonna blow her speakers out. _"Sorry, but I just can't listen to this song unless it's on full volume!" She's right about that. This song is just one of those songs that you have to blast at full volume and deal with the consequences later. It's almost impossible and unbearable to listen to this type of song without blasting it with not a care in the world. Stephanie starts to sing along but I can't even hear her over the music.

I don't usually sing around people I don't know. If I sing around you, I'm probably really comfortable with you. My singing voice is awful and I don't need to be made fun of, so I just don't sing unless I'm alone studying or doing housework. So while I stare out the window, I mumble the chorus of the song to myself and diligently wait patiently for her to reach the Seven Eleven. "Boom clap. The sound of my heart, the beat goes on and on and on and on and boom clap. You make me feel good… come on to me, come on to me now." As she's approaching where I know the Seven Eleven is, I grab my purse from between my legs and get ready to get out.

Stephanie tampers down the volume of the radio and puts her turn signal on to get to where the Seven Eleven is. "Okay, so where do I go from here?"

"You can just drop me off here. I'll walk from here, it's not that far." _Does that make me sound weird? _"I just don't want you to go out of your way anymore. I can walk from here." I put my hand on the door handle and wait for her to stop the car completely.

"It's fine… I'm not really out of my way. I don't like far off from here, actually. Where do you live?" She asks me again.

"Stephanie, it's okay. I wanna walk from here." _She's awfully pushy. I just really don't want to show her that I live where I live. Ridgeview Apartments are literally the WORST section of Seattle and I know for a fact that she'd judge me if she knew I lived there. She'll probably think I'm a drug addict, because I'm literally the ONLY non-druggie that lives in the apartments. _

"I'm not gonna let you walk from here, Jo. What kind of sense would that make?" She turns her radio completely off and just looks at me. "If you don't tell me where then I'm just gonna take you back to my house with me. I won't be able to live with myself if I let you walk home from here. It's late, it's dark, there are hardly any streetlights on this side of town and you're pretty. I know what most guys would do to you if they crossed you alone in a dark alley."

"I'll be fine. I'm a big girl." _I know what most guys would do to me, too. And I know what I can do to most guys. Seriously, if there's ever been a person that can walk home in the dark, it's me. _"Nobody's gonna touch me and it's not even that far of a walk." I pull the handle of her door to get out but she locks me in. "You're not gonna let this go, are you?" She shakes her head at me and her face reads seriousness. I blow out a huff of air and roll my eyes at her. "Fine." I look down at my purse in my hands. "…Ridgeview. The apartments. Just go there."

"…What are you doing at Ridgeview? Boyfriend live there or something?" She turns her car around so she can drive up the hill that'll lead me to my house. I glare at her through the corner of my eye. Don't get me wrong. I really like Stephanie and I'm super glad that I met her and I'm glad that she's my friend and I'm grateful that she drove me home. But with all due respect, I don't think she knows me well enough to start judging me for where I live. And quite frankly, it's none of her goddamn business why I live in Ridgeview.

Call me a coldhearted bitch, but I'm not the type that'll just warm up to somebody in no time. I've just been through some pretty heavy shit in my day and I learned the hard way that the more you open up to someone, the more opportunities they have to hurt you. You tell them one thing and they use it against you. You start to like them and they decide that means that you're committed for life…and then they think that means they're entitled to have you. And then shit just gets bad for me and then I end up in places I have no business being. Yeah….all that happens when you open up to somebody. So it's not that I don't like Stephanie—because I do. I just don't think it's appropriate for me to even let her in yet.

"Is there somebody in there for you to go home to?" I can tell that she's judging me. She's looking out the window at the apartment building I told her to stop in front of and she sees that there are no lights on and she sees that there is a group of boys standing outside of it and she's JUDGING ME.

"Are you this damn pushy with all of your friends or just me?" I snap at her. _Crap. I'm sorry. I can't be such a bitch…she road me home. _"…Sorry." I mutter. "…I…" I put my hand on the door handle again. "I live alone and I live here. It's not… it's not the greatest, but…" I lick my lip and bite my tongue with my lips. "It's affordable." I put my purse on my shoulder and open up the door. "Thanks again for the ride home, Stephanie. I'll see you tomorrow."

"You can call me Steph… and like I said, it's not a problem." I can tell that I just slightly offended her by snapping at her but I really am sorry for that but I'm not gonna keep apologizing to her. Either she can accept it or not, I don't care. "Are you gonna need a ride to work tomorrow morning? Yanno, since your car is still at the—"

"Shit." I interrupt her. "Yeah… would you mind? I'll be outside here by 6:00…"

"I'll be back to get you at 6:00 then."

**Alex's Point of View.**

"So I'm thinking pink Chrysanthemums… all over the pews. You know how the pews down at the church have those velvet ropes to separate them? We can pin the flowers along those just to add some color to it. You think that would be nice?" She excitedly stuffs the notebook underneath my nose and shows me her little sketch. I'm actually quite tired of this. It's been the same thing for the last month and it's starting to get redundant. Every other day she changes the colors. Yesterday it was orange, the day before that was beige. Today it's pink and tomorrow it'll probably be yellow. "You see how the ropes curve? And I already talked to the—Alex! Are you listening to me?"

"Hmm? Mhm." I lazily nod my head and pretend to be very interested in this. Honestly, it wouldn't quite phase me if we just went down to the courthouse, signed the papers and spent the night at home with a box of takeout chicken. But I know the kind of person I'm marrying and I know for sure that she would have a conniption fit if we didn't at least invite our friends and her family to it. If it makes her happy then I guess a church wedding isn't that bad. "Why don't we just have all the colors of the rainbow, babe? That way we don't have to keep changing the dress and tux color." I catch a strand of her beautiful blonde hair in my fingers and tuck it behind her ear.

"…Oh my goodness, that's GENIUS!" Her cheeks flush bright red and she throws her arms around my neck. Really, it's genius? I was being facetious… "My dress can be pink, and then I can put Mere in an orange dress… Cristina would look really nice in red, don't you think? Babe, you're GENIUS!" She rewards my "geniusness" with two rough kisses on my lips.

Carefully, I shift the weight off my left leg so I'm more comfortable and rest my hand on her leg. It's not like she's heavy sitting on my lap, but all her weight was on one leg and it was starting to hurt. "Let's take a break from wedding crap for a minute." I grab the tablet of sketchpad paper that's been glued to her hand since I popped the question last month and put it down on our bedside table. "We have three more months to do the planning, Iz." To further ease her into the idea of leaving the wedding planning alone for a little while, I plant a kiss on the back of her neck. "Tell me about your day… how was work?"

"Same old, same old." Her tiny little fingers begin to play with the hair on my arms. "What about your day? How'd your interns do?"

"They're idiots, but…" I put my arms around her waist. "I guess it's my job to de-idiotify them, isn't it?" She nods her head and gives me another kiss. "They were too scared to round this morning so one of Kepner's losers had to help me round."

"Are any of them smart?" Her thumb grazes the bottom of my lip. "Or is this just you going back to your old asshole ways? I hate that you're a dick towards anyone that isn't me. It gets old." She kisses me again and I kiss her back. "But it makes me feel special."

"Yeah, well…" I chuckle. "But no. None of them are smart. The idiot of Kepner's that helped me round was the only one that showed competence, but I can tell that she doesn't know her ass from her elbow either."

"How can you tell that from just one day, babe? You should give them a chance…" Again, she kisses me. "You weren't always a badass third year resident. You had to start somewhere. Poor girl is just trying to learn."

"She's a snooty little princess that doesn't belong there. She wore makeup to work… who wears makeup to work? Especially surgeons?"

"….Well yeah, she's probably a snooty little princess then."

"Exactly." I sigh and glance over at the clock. "I should probably go shower and stuff and get ready to go to bed. Early morning tomorrow for me."

"Yeah, same here." She gets off of my lap and goes into the bathroom. I lean my head against the wall and close my eyes. Sometimes, Izzie's right about me. Maybe I should stop judging the snooty little princess before I get to know her. But she should've made a better first impression. She wore makeup to practice medicine. That SCREAMS snobby to me. But I'll give her a chance. I was a crappy intern once too.

Enough thinking about the stupid intern idiots. I have more important things to think about… like what color my tuxedo is going to be on my wedding day.


	3. Chapter 3

"She changed the colors again, you know." I tear the aluminum foil off from around my breakfast and take a bite out of the corner. The breakfast burritos aren't that good here but I'm starving and the only alternative is some type of casserole. I wish it was Wednesday. They have bacon on Wednesdays. I stop walking for a second to give Mere time to catch up with me. She's busy putting sugar in her coffee at the coffee station. "Something about pink flowers on the velvet ropes, but I think I turned her on to the idea of multicolored."

"I wish you guys would make up your mind so I know what color I'm going to be forced into wearing." Without stirring her coffee to dissolve the sugar, she takes a sip and stands next to me. "Why's she so against white anyway? I thought she wanted to do the whole traditional thing yet she doesn't want to wear white?"

"She thinks white is too plain." I shrug my shoulders and take another bite of my breakfast. "If it was up to me, I swear I'd drive down to Vegas and do it in 24 hours…but you know Iz. She wants it to be all girly and crap." I take the last bite of my breakfast burrito before I toss it in the trashcan. "You know it doesn't matter to me. You know I wouldn't care if we pulled a you and Shepherd and went down to City Hall."

"If you don't want a wedding so bad then why don't you just tell her?" We're on the same wavelength because we both start walking towards the cafeteria exit at the same time. "I'm sick of listening to you act like a little bitch-baby over the wedding. At first I thought it was just jitters but I can clearly see that you're not into marrying her."

"Wrong again." I mumble. "I'm into marrying her…otherwise I wouldn't have asked her to marry me in the first place. I just don't really picture myself in the black tux reciting wedding vows in front of her family but not mine." I really do mean that. If I didn't want to get married I wouldn't have even asked. I know that I want to marry Iz…I know that for sure. I can't really explain how I know this, I just do. It's like this feeling that I got one day. The feeling that I could possibly spend the rest of my life with her. I get that feeling every time I see her. But I wish that we didn't have to have a big wedding. "I wanna make her happy, Mere. You know she hasn't been happy since all that stuff went down… and if a big wedding makes her happy then we're having a big wedding. So you're just gonna have to deal with me bitching to you about it."

"I'm just saying." As we walk past the scheduling station, she picks up two electronic charts, hands me one and keeps the other for herself. "I've been around my fair share of failed marriages and jumping into it isn't the best thing to do, obviously."

"Stop trying to talk me out of it."

"That's SO not what I'm doing. You and Izzie are… soulmates or whatever. You guys belong together. But that doesn't mean you have to marry her just because she's a little messed up over her health issues. She's gonna be fine, which is why I don't get it. It's not like if you don't marry her right now she's gonna die out of nowhere. She's been cancer-free for months and the chances of it coming back are slim to none. I'm just trying to see your logic here."

"That's just it." I check the time on my watch. I have to round pretty soon. "I love 'er. And you never know when crap's gonna happen, so if I'm this sure about wanting to spend my life with her, the sooner the better." I look at my watch again. "I'm gonna be late for rounds. I'm on Robbins' service and she specifically asked for me and just one intern for the day." I lock up the electronic chart and put it underneath my armpit so I can walk away. "See ya later."

**Jo's Point of View.**

"I was walking by OB today and I think I saw the sexy guy." Steph tosses me back my hairbrush that I let her use a moment ago. "Is he light-skinned? With a shaved head and his eyes are like… brown?" She combs her curly hair back with her fingers and puts it up in a loose, curly, thick ponytail. Because I'm too busy concentrating on getting my hair up into a ponytail that won't annoy me all day, I just nod the answer to her questions rather than talk aloud to her. Her eyes widen a little and she cracks a smile. "Yes, Jo. Yes." She nods and adjusts her glasses on her nose. "Yes. Yes, that is a fine, fine, fine, FINE man."

"I told you he was a sexy one." I pull two pieces of my ponytail to tighten it and slam my locker door shut. I sit down on the bench in front of our lockers and tap on the wood with my fingertips. "Did you look at the board? Who's your resident for the day?"

"It doesn't say. I think we're supposed to just wait in here for the day." She walks over closer to me and stands right next to where I'm sitting. "Can I touch your hair? You have something in it… and I don't want you to feel like I'm molesting you if I touch it without your permission."

I snicker lightly and shrug my shoulders. "Go for it." As soon as I give her permission, she pulls a strand of my hair and yanks it out. "…Ouch?"

"You have either paint… or blood in your hair. One of the two." She presents me with the piece she just pulled out and I take it off her to examine it. I wasn't around paint lately and I haven't even done so much as a single suture since I've been here. It can't be blood and it can't be paint. What the hell is in my hair? "I got it all out but it was pretty caked on this piece here."

"…I think it's fingernail polish. I painted my toenails red last night and it went all bad when I sneezed in the process of painting." I run my finger along the gunk she just pulled out of my hair. "Yeah, that's nail polish." I toss the strand of hair on the floor and slouch while I look around. I honestly think Steph caught my drift from last night because when she picked me up this morning, she didn't say anything about where I live, why I live there and how I live. She didn't say anything. Instead, we started to talk about how much she loved being on Dr. Yang's service yesterday. She thinks she wants cardio as her specialty but I keep trying to tell her that residents DON'T specialize yet. She's completely in love with the idea of cardiothoracic surgery though.

"…Jo, can we talk?" Steph's voice is different when she approaches me this time. It's softer, a little bit more serene and very serious. _I thought we were already talking? _"There's something I've been meaning to ask you, actually. It's something that you'll probably have to think about, and you shouldn't feel obligated to say yes to me, you can obviously say no… and I'll give you time to think about it. I don't really need an answer until next week and don't think I'm being pushy or annoying because of what happened last night, I would've asked you anyway but it just made it a lot more fitting and…" She's ranting and I think it's because she's nervous. She shouldn't really be nervous. I'm not exactly a hard person to talk to.

"Just spit it out, Steph." Because she's standing up and I'm sitting down, I turn my head and look up at her. "What's going on?" My mind just starts filtering through the things I could've possibly done wrong. That's always been a habit of mine. It doesn't matter what it is, I always do it. I always feel the need to think about what I could possibly get into trouble for when somebody tells me that they have to talk to me. From where I come from, talking is never really a good thing. "Did I do something to piss you off?" I just ask her right off the bat.

"No!" She shakes her head really fast. "I just can't spit it out like that because I don't really know how to approach it. I don't really want to make you mad, you know? I just want you to know the facts. I'm not judging you or anything…let's be clear about that. I just like you a lot. Not… NOT in the lesbian kind of way but in the…. If we went to the same high school growing up, you'd definitely be someone I'd hang out with kind of way."

"…You're not making any sense to me…" I'm not stupid and I have a really good way of reading people. I don't know what it is. Maybe it's the fact that I grew up around a bunch of shitty people so I have really good radar for shitty people, or maybe it's just my intuition. But I can always tell when somebody's trying to make a point and I usually figure out the point they're trying to make before they even make it. I think she wants me to… "Go 'head and say it, Steph. I already know what you're gonna ask me…"

"Would you please?" A look of relief washes over her face and I just look away from her. I'm not angry by any means, but I'm a tad bit annoyed. I'm annoyed that she just put me on the spot like this and even more annoyed that I don't know how to say no. I can't afford it though so no has to be the answer. "I have an extra room and I was just gonna move somewhere smaller but the smaller place I have my eye on is a hundred bucks more a month than where I'm at right now. But I just have this extra room that's collecting dust and you said yourself that your apartment is a piece of crap…"

I close my eyes and throw my head up to the ceiling. Do you know how badly I wish I could accept this offer? ANYTHING is better than my apartment. But if I do it, I'll have to split the bills with her, I'll have to help her pay the rent and everything. I can hardly afford the $150 rent I pay right now at my shitty apartment and $150 is CHEAP. "Steph…. I can't." Like I said, I have pretty good radar for detecting people that are full of shit. I know that Stephanie is a good person and I know that she's not a psychotic psychopath or anything like that. Yeah, I hardly know her but I hardly knew my college roommate either. I'd LOVE to move out of my shitty place but I really can't swing it right now. And I don't really want to explain that to her right now. "I don't have—"

"Edwards, you're with Yang today. Go up to the CCU, she's waiting." Interrupting the conversation I'm having with Steph is the chief of surgery. I haven't learned his name yet but I do know that he's the chief. I really haven't heard anybody refer to him as anything other than "the chief" so his name isn't something that I've caught yet. He has orange-ish hair and a really muscular build. I squint and look at the name on his white coat. _Dr. Owen Hunt. _Okay. Hunt. "Wilson, you're on Robbins' service, go up to Pediatrics and find Karev… he'll let you know what do from there." After he tells me where to go, he walks away from the section of the locker room that Steph and I were sitting at and goes over to the other section to give the other interns their instructions for the day.

"….I…." I stand up and fix my scrubs so I look presentable. "We'll talk about it at lunch, okay?" I dismiss the topic to Steph and she willingly nods. _Now I have until lunch to figure out how I'm going to tell her that I'm broke without sounding like a pity case._

**Alex's Point of View.**

"I know a couple months ago, you were all still in the safety of whatever medical school you went to, and I trust that you were all trained exceptionally well—well enough to get into this program." Robbins is usually very cheerful and peppy and so bright that it could make you want to strangle her. But the way she's standing here talking to the idiots and explaining to them what they're about to witness, she's exactly the opposite. Her tone is firm and serious, just like it needs to be. "But this is NOTHING like med school. What you're about to walk into is real…and it is dangerous and I don't want anything less than serious surgical interns, so if you don't think you can handle it go down to the pit right now and stay out of the way." She turns around and elbows the blue button that automatically opens the door to the NICU.

Nobody out of the group of interns left. Funny, because I think at least five of them should be in the pit right now. I really think that there's only three out of the current group that can handle Peds. It's rough…it's a tough service. I like to think of myself as a strong kind of guy, too. After all, I got through college on a wrestling scholarship and I still bench 325, but some days I'm not even strong enough to handle the toughness that is Pediatrics. Still and yet, the group of idiots follows Robbins inside the NICU and I can tell by the looks on their faces that they're too soft to be in here. There are only two of them that are keeping a straight face right now; the short one with shoulder-length blonde hair and light blue/grey eyes looks a little bit bored with it in here and the tall one with sun-kissed, tan skin and a long brunette ponytail looks like she's really interested in being here. If I can see that a few of the interns can't handle Peds then of course Robbins can see it too. Nevertheless, the group and I all follow Robbins over to the biggest incubator in the NICU.

"Who's presenting?" Because there are parents that are sitting right next to the incubator that contains the baby, Robbins switches the tone of her voice back to something preppy and cheerful. I open up the electronic chart so I can make sure that whichever one of the idiots that presents gives the correct information.

"Natalie Simpson, 15 hours old, born with her intestines on the outside of her body. …Two hours post op from having a colostomy bag attached." One of the interns that looked incredibly uninterested in being here takes care of the presenting. She's tall; taller than the other tall one and she has hair that falls in gentle waves around the middle of her back. I have half a mind to tell her to get her hair up in a ponytail, but this is still Robbins' teaching moment so I'll rest my case for now.

"Great job, Dr. Murphy." Robbins opens up the incubator and takes the top of it down so she can get inside it. "And why can't we just take her in to surgery right now to correct the issue?"

The blonde one that's apparently named "Dr. Murphy" speaks up again. "Because the tissue is still too swollen to insert back into the body at the moment."

"And what would happen if we were to put swollen tissue back into the body of a human this tiny?" Robbins retorts. The blonde chick doesn't have an answer for this one. I turn and look at all of them. They all have puzzled looks on their faces, like Robbins and I are speaking some foreign language to them and they've never even taken so much as a high school course in biology. "Can any of you tell me what kind of complications the patient could face if we stuffed swollen tissue into her body at this point in time right now?"

"….It wouldn't fit." The tall brunette standing in the back actually speaks up. I give her a quick look that lets her know she's on the right track so she should continue. "First off, the tissue is too swollen to fit inside and if it was put back before the swelling went down to a normal size, her body could reject the organs… and the tissue could become necrotic and she could turn septic and possibly go into shock."

I clear my throat and opt to test the brunette's knowledge some more. "If you were the attending on this case, what would you recommend?" I ask her.

She looks at me like she's Bambi and I just shot her mother. "I…I would…" She looks around the room as if there are answers hidden in the machinery or something. "I would monitor her…give her anti-rejection meds periodically to ensure that when the organs are of decent enough size to put back inside her body, she won't reject them. I would make sure her vitals remain stable and monitor the swelling on the organs as well as the health of the organs to make sure the tissue doesn't die." She looks at me with desperation in her eyes, like she wants me to tell her that she's right and throw her a bone like she's a dog.

"Nice job." I mutter.

"Well done, Wilson." Robbins hands the brunette her pink stethoscope and steps aside. "Why don't you come over here and check the baby's vitals?" The brunette nods her head and stands next to the incubator. "You check a tiny human's vitals the same way you'd check a big human's vitals…just be a lot gentler." She puts her hand atop the intern's hand and guides her to where the heartbeat would be the strongest. "Real easy, now…" I'm actually learning something by watching Robbins teach right now. I'm not learning anything by watching her teach the idiot how to check a baby's heartbeat—I already know how to do that. I'm learning how to be a teacher from watching her. I guess if I don't treat the idiots like the idiots I think they are, I could really teach them a thing or two. I don't attribute the kind of surgeon I'm becoming entirely to Arizona, by the way. She's a big part of why I'm deciding to stick with Peds, but she's not the reason I ever went into it. I do have Dr. Montgomery to thank for that matter as well, but whatever.

"Dr. Karev." Robbins takes her stethoscope off the brunette girl and puts it back around her neck. I rip myself out of my lazy thoughts and turn my attention completely to her. I mumble a "hmm?" to let her know that I'm listening to whatever she's calling my attention for. "I want you to go ahead and take Dr. Wilson with you for the day. I need you to go check up on our jaundice baby and our triplets then I want you to prep our pyloric baby for surgery. Teach Dr. Wilson all that you can…I'm gonna teach the rest of these guys a thing or two with Natalie here."

"Alright. Come on." I motion for the brunette to follow me and she quickly does. "Don't get in my way, alright? I have a lot to do today and I don't have room for distractions or errors." I lead her over to the gloving station and motion for her to grab some. She grabs a pair of pink gloves and shoves them on her hands. "I'm going to teach you a couple things today but I don't need you asking unnecessary, stupid questions. And I don't need you overstepping your boundaries. You are an INTERN…you're nothing. You're at the bottom of the surgical food chain. Got it?"

"I got it." She folds her arms and follows everything that I do.

"What'd you say your name was again? I wasn't paying attention." I hold the electronic chart in front of my face and scroll through it to find the chart for Jacob Weston…the jaundice baby.

"I didn't…" Nosily, she stands on her tip toes to read through the chart with me. "But it's Jo. Jo Wilson…"

"Alright Jo Wilson…follow me…and don't touch anything." When I find the chart I was looking for, I put the tablet underneath my arm and walk over to the west wing of the NICU. "I don't know if you have a specialty in mind yet, but just to be honest, you'll probably be spending a lot of time on specialties that you're not interested in." I stop walking as quickly as I am so she can keep up. "So for reference, just in case you spend more time on Peds, this is obviously the NICU. The NICU is split into four wings. The north wing, west wing, south wing and the east wing. Each wing is a different level, the north wing is for the babies that are the worst off. The north wing is what we just came from. The west wing are for babies that can be discharged soon, the east wing is for preemies that still need a few more surgeries and the south wing is where we treat the drug babies. Got that?" She nods her head. "What did I just say, then?"

"North wing is bad, where the bad babies are kept. West wing is good, where the babies that are going home soon are. The east wing is for preemies that have the usual preemie problems and need surgery and the south wing is for drug addicted babies. I got it."

"Quick learner." I commend her and get to the incubator that we were in search of. "You know why this baby is in darkness with a blue light?"

"…Because the UV light helps keep his bilirubin levels intact. He's jaundiced so he has too much bilirubin, right? So you want to kill off some of it?" She's got a good recollection memory. She must've gone to a kick ass med school for these complicated terms and diagnoses and treatments to be drilled into her brain like that.

"Nice." I turn off the UV light inside the incubator and open it up. "You have a specialty in mind yet?" I take my stethoscope from around my neck and put it in my ears. "You'd be good in Peds, I think. Most people think Peds is a blow-off specialty but it's actually pretty tough. You and the other little blonde one are the only ones that could take it."

"Who, Dr. Brooks? I don't know much about her, but…" She watches in pure amazement as I detach the baby inside the incubator from his UV radiation. "Um… no. I don't really have a specific specialty in mind just yet. Where I… Where I went school, they beat it into your head to go into your internship with an open mind because residents and interns DON'T specialize until their third year. So I haven't really thought about a specialty."

"Oh, really? Dr. Webber spent a year beating it into our heads that interns and residents don't specialize… your school must've been kick ass. They don't teach you that everywhere." I briskly take the baby's temperature and read it. "…Where'd you go to school at?"

"…Um…" She takes a step back and watches me. "H…Princeton first… then Harvard Medical. I guess it was good." She shrugs it off like Harvard and Princeton are shitty schools. "That's like… the first thing I learned in med school. Don't specialize until your third year. That and how to bag a person. I learned those on my first day."

Oh, great. Robbins stuck me with the bitch of the group. She couldn't have given me someone humble that had to at least work towards becoming a surgeon. No, she had to stick me with the rich snob that went to Ivy League schools and has daddy wipe her ass with dollar bills. _She would stick me with this… this… this princess._ "I would comment on how expensive your school bills must be, but I guess it doesn't hold much water to someone that turns their nose up to a five dollar bill. Daddy wouldn't let his little girl be in debt, huh?"

"…I manage." She shrugs her shoulders. "I'm not as far in debt as you probably think. I mean, yeah I'm in debt, but it's not—"

"Daddy taking too long to pay off your bills?" She wrinkles her eyebrows at me when I say that. "We're done here. Follow me again, Princess."

"I'm not…" She starts but doesn't finish. "I'm coming."

**Jo's Point of View.**

"Anybody else want to trade services?" I slam down my lunch tray which only contains a wrapped up hamburger and a boat of French fries. I spent the five bucks that was supposed to go towards my water bill on lunch. I'm starving so it was necessary for me to eat something today. "Dr. Karev is the biggest asshole I've ever encountered in my entire life." I pull out the chair and sit down across from Steph. "He spent the entire morning calling me 'princess.' Like I'm a fucking dog or something? I'm not a fuckin' dog… why does he give me little bitch-names like I'm a dog? And I'm not even a princess, what even is that? I spent the whole freakin' furkin' morning listening to him insult me!" I grab two French fries and stuff them in my mouth.

"I am NOT trading with you… nope." Steph's eating a bag of Doritos. "Did I mention how much I love Dr. Yang?" She chomps a mouthful of chips and washes it down with a bottle of water. "Oh, and I met the enemy's wife today. Her name's Isabella or something like that, but they just kept calling her Izzie. She's SO nice… like…. Kepner nice."

"Well she probably has to be nice to deal with the Douche-lord that is her husband." I take a couple deep breaths as I unravel the wrapping that my hamburger is inside. If I don't take a couple deep breaths, I WILL escalate and it's never a good thing if I escalate. "I don't even understand how somebody can be that shallow. I never want to be on Dr. Robbins' service again because I DON'T want to deal with him. He's… I don't understand how he can be that nice and gentle with children but SO shitty with me?"

"Are you perhaps misjudging him?" She picks up one of her chicken tenders and dunks it in barbecue sauce. "Because his wife is literally the nicest doctor here. She called Dr. Yang up for a consult and she was so sweet. And she's pretty, too. I just can't imagine someone like Dr. Stevens being married to someone that's as big a jerk as you're describing."

"Oh no… he's an ASSHOLE." I take a sip of my water and twist the cap back on. "Fucking…dickhead."

"Wow…. Angry Jo is…. Angry Jo is scary." She dusts off the rest of her chicken tender and swallows it hard. "But anyway, aside from hating Dr. Karev, did Angry Jo do any thinking about what Stephanie said?"

"…Yeah she did, and she still can't."

"Why?" She looks really disappointed. "Jo, why? Can't you just… I dunno… swallow your pride?"

"It's not a pride thing. I just can't afford to do this. I…" I put down my hamburger and fold my hands. I look around to make sure nobody's around here to hear what I'm about to say. "I'm… I'm REALLY broke, Steph. I used my last five bucks to eat lunch today and now I'm five bucks short on my water bill. I don't know what the hell my next move is. I don't live in Ridgeview because I like it, I live in Ridgeview because I can't afford someplace else. I pay 150 bucks to live in Ridgeview and I still struggle to make ends meet. I can't afford to move in with you. I'll have to help pay things I can't afford… I can't do it, Steph. I can't. Please don't tell anybody…"

"Jo, we're interns… we're ALL broke." She rolls her eyes at me. "We're all broke. We get shitty paychecks for being here and we're all poor little bitches that can't afford stuff. I can't afford my apartment, which is why I'm looking for a roommate. I was gonna put an ad out in the paper but it dawned on me… you need a new place and I need a roommate. Why not just ask somebody I KNOW, aside from asking a perfect stranger? If we both split the bill, then we'll both save money. It costs 200 bucks a month for me to live in my apartment right now. I can't afford to pay that on my own plus buy groceries and pay my cell phone bill. But if… If you move in with me, then we're both paying 100 bucks. That's cheaper for me and for you."

"That doesn't include the water bill, the gas bill, the electricity, the cable… my car insurance, YOUR car insurance… it's not cheaper for me. It's not…" I count off all the bills on my fingers for her.

"Everything's included!" She throws her hands in the air. "My $200 a month includes my water, my gas, my electricity. The only thing I pay for is my cable bill and my dad pays that because we SHARE the cable. I'm on his cable plan. He lives in Olympia and we're on the same cable plan. And if the two of us pitch in, I'm SURE we can buy groceries. I have an extra room that I was going to give to some stranger… why can't I just give it to you? I have a bed, a dresser and a desk in my spare room that's just collecting dust. Please, Jo? Swallow your pride and just say, 'Yes, Steph'." She pokes her lip out and gives me puppy dog eyes. "You don't have to live in Ridgeview anymore…"

"…I'll think about it." Now how do I tell her that I'd rather live alone? I'm not a loner or anything like that. I swear I'm not antisocial. But I'm so used to being alone. I've been by myself since I was sixteen years old. I've lived by myself for twelve years, with the exception of my college roommate. I don't know. Maybe I should just accept the damn offer.


	4. Chapter 4

"Just gimme a minute…" I open up the car door and step out of it. It's 9:30 at night and I'm just now getting home. Today was of course another exhausting day at the hospital, but for some reason today was worse than yesterday was. My joints feel like they're going to unhinge at the bases and my entire body is just going to topple apart. I politely excuse my way through a crowd of men that are standing at the entrance of the apartment building smoking what smells like pot. I used to be scared out of my mind to come home at night because they all congregate right in front of the entrance to my building and I had a bad experience with them my first night here. They don't much bother me anymore, though. If I don't say anything to them they won't say anything to me.

I think me and the druggies that I live with are in the same boat when it comes to the fact that we don't want any problems with the law. It's like an unspoken little connection between all of us. The first night I moved into my place, I had to run down to the grocery store for a roll of toilet paper and a bag of chips for my dinner. I somehow managed to get lost in downtown Seattle so when I finally made my way home, it was late and dark like it is right now and the group of druggies were standing outside. Much like I had to do a minute ago, I had to push my way through the crowd to get in my house. They asked me what my name was, I told them it was Jo, they said they never seen me around before, I told them that I had just moved here, the one asked me if I wanted a little bit of what they were smoking on, I told them no. I messed around for a moment too long trying to find my house key and the tallest one of the group thought it was okay to grab my waist.

I gotta be honest when I say that I don't really consider myself a punk. I can hold my own in fights against boys….trust me, I can. But one' s hand was on my waist and the other had me by my arm. I vaguely remember telling them to get the hell off me as someone was trying to either unbutton my jeans or pull down my sweatpants—I don't remember which one. Put it this way, I DO know that somebody was trying to take my pants off me. I never threatened to call the cops but I don't really remember how I got them to leave me alone. I know that I managed to get out of that with just an unwanted kiss and a feel-up underneath my shirt, though. I can't really remember what stopped the two that were all over me from taking my pants off. I sort of remember hitting one's head off the wall…but that's all. I don't know.

Anyway, ever since then, I try to avoid coming home late at night like this. I yank open the door to my apartment building and lightly jog up the steps to the second floor, instinctively glancing over at the corner that's next to my front door. It's a habit for me to do that anymore. She's been gone since last month and I still find myself checking to see if she's okay. I wonder if I'll ever see her again. I'm 28 years old and I can remember a handful of people throughout my lifetime that I would like to see again. Brynn is one of those people I'd like to see again.

When I first moved here, Brynn was one of the first people I met. She would always stand in the corner beside my door because she lived right across the hall and nine times out of ten; she was locked out of her house because her mom wasn't home. I never did know her age but if I had to guess, I'd say she was more than three but no more than four. I think she was three. She still had a pacifier and she wore a diaper, but she was old enough to call me "Doh" and tell me her name was "Bin." Anyway, I came out of my house to put gas in my car the morning after my move and she was there. She stood knee-high and she looked like a porcelain baby doll. She had a little bit of curly dark brown hair and cream-colored skin with rosy cheeks. Brynn was often the reason I went to bed hungry at nights but I never minded because what I had was never much, but I felt like she should have it.

I don't know when, but sometime I gathered enough balls inside myself to call the cops and leave an anonymous tip that there was a baby outside of my apartment building that's being mistreated. I watched with delight out of my window the day that social services came and took Brynn away. I sometimes scare the shit out of myself when I think about the fact that she could've gone into foster care, but it's easy these days to talk myself into the fact that foster homes are NOT like they used to be. Then again, foster care had to be better than starving outside of the house that your mother never let you inside. Plus, Brynn was an adorable little baby so it'd be easy for her to get adopted. The image of her waving at me through my window saying, "Buh-bye Doh" is still burned in the back of my head, but whatever. Like I said, I've only been living here for three months but I have stories to tell for weeks about this three month binge.

I grab a grocery store bag from underneath my kitchen sink and go into my bedroom with it. I go over to my garbage bag of clean clothes and stuff a pair of underwear inside the grocery bag, a pair of shorts and a t-shirt. I go inside my bathroom and shove my toothbrush and my deodorant in the bag. When I'm sure I have everything I need, I tie a knot inside the bag and go back to my bedroom.

After a long day of work and being insulted and mocked for going to Harvard, I just want to sleep in my own room. But Stephanie invited me to have a couple drinks and sleep over at her apartment "to see how I like it" before I accept the offer to move in. Well, I've found a way to tell her that I'd rather live alone and I feel like I've already rejected her enough for one day, so I just said that I would drink and sleep over at her house tonight. Because interns work every second day at Seattle Grace-Mercy West, we're off tomorrow. I'm glad I have an off day because I have a bunch of shit to do. Like call a tow-truck to get my car out of the hospital parking lot and try to go make enough money to pay them to tow it.

I grab my cell phone charger and make a beeline for my front door. I lock it behind me for the night and walk back down the steps to Steph's car. I don't know where they went, but the group of druggies is gone when I come back out. I open up the door and get back inside Steph's car. "You're so lucky I actually like you. I was so tempted to just get into my bed and go to sleep. I'm exhausted."

"So would now be a bad time to tell you that I invited Leah, Heather and Shane over at 11? Would now be the worst time to tell you that?" She pulls out of my apartment complex parking lot and turns to go to her house. "I can always cancel, but we can only celebrate making it through two days of internship once in a lifetime."

"Really, Steph?" I throw my head back and grit my teeth. "I thought you said it was just gonna be us. I already told you how bad I suck at making friends…"

"You'll be fine Jo. We're just gonna sit in my living room, drink a little bit and listen to music. It'll be fun." She glances over at me and I utter a low, monotone groan. "…You really are uppity. You don't know how to let loose. It's that Ivy League education…"

"I'm NOT uppity and I'm not a snob. And I DO know how to let loose… it's not like I went to nun school, it was just the Ivy League." I roll my eyes and look out the window. "I'm just not very good at making friends. I'm a friendly person but… ehh." I look over at her. "You really think I'm a snob?"

"…You do kind of act prissy sometimes. Like you're too good to do things with the other interns. Sometimes it seems like you think that because you went to Ivy League schools that you're better than all of us. Only sometimes, though."

"….But I don't?" I'm starting to get irritated. I fold my arms across my chest and look straight. People thinking that I think that I'm prissy, stuck up and bitchy really bothers me because I'm TOTALLY NOT. How could I be?! I came from NOTHING…how can I act like a snob? I've never held anything bigger than a twenty dollar bill in my hand. How am I a priss?! "Because I totally wipe my ASS with hundred dollar bills. Because I have a pair of fucking shoes to match my every mood…. Right? I'm the prissiest bitch on the face of the earth."

"Chill, Jo… I never said any of that." Steph's voice is a little bit alarmed. "You asked and I answered. You asked me if I thought you were a snob and the answer is no…I don't think so. But sometimes you do act like you're the reborn Jesus Christ… wearing makeup to work and stuff like you can't stand being ugly? That bothers the others. It doesn't bother me much but the others don't really like it." My vision starts to blur up with unshed tears. I put my bottom lip between my top teeth and start breathing slowly. _See, this is why I'm no good at making friends. They all decide that they don't like me before they even get to know me. I really don't try to act snobby I just don't want it to be obvious that I'm a homeless dumpster diver. I guess in my efforts, sometimes it comes off as snooty. But I swear I'm not… _

"Well…" I rub my hand across my nose and sniff. "I don't really like for people to know I don't have anything… it keeps them from pitying my sorry ass. So sometimes, I just…. I try to make it so that people don't know that I'm worthless and I guess it comes off as a bitchy, prissy attitude. But I swear I'm not like that. I… I know the value of a dollar. I know what it's like to struggle to get the things you want, I swear. I'm not like that…"

"You don't have to convince me. I know you're not, but I'm just saying that when you act like that… you kind of have to brace yourself for people thinking you're a snob. It's especially easy for the people that have never talked to you to think that because when you look like that… it's just a given."

"…Look like what?"

"Like you just stepped out of the Miss America pageant." She pulls into the driveway of a small duplex. "Just listen to me for a second." She shuts off her car and turns to me. I tuck my hair behind my ear and listen. "If you've never talked to someone before, but they walked into a SURGICAL internship with a made up face, wouldn't you think they were a bit presumptuous? What if that same person looked like a model and then everyone found out that this person went to Harvard Medical while the rest of us just went to state colleges? What would you think?"

"…I would think that she was a bitch." I admit. I don't think I'm the hottest thing to walk the planet, but I do know that I'm not ugly. I'm not pretty or sexy or hot, but I'm not hideous. And I did go to really good schools. And sometimes my attitude makes me want to slap the crap out of myself… so I can only imagine how others must perceive me. I'm not mad at Steph, because like she said… I DID ask her if she thought I was snobby. I guess I just have to start getting to know people better so that people can get to know me and know that I'm NOT like that.

"You're right. It's not fair that people prejudge you before they even get to talk to you, but that's life." She opens up her car door but doesn't get out yet. "…You know Stacy? I don't know her last name because she's just that irrelevant, but you know… Stacy. She's short and fat with long red hair and a unibrow." She explains her to me and I think I know who she's talking about. She was on Dr. Robbins' service with me today, I believe. "She assumed that I was a nurse today." My jaw drops at that statement. "Yep. She asked me for a calculator and I told her that I didn't have one and she asked me what kind of nurse I was. And then when I told her that I was an intern just like her, she told me she's never seen a black surgeon before."

My jaw drops even further at that. "…But… But Dr. Bailey and Dr. Webber…was she serious?!" I'm angry FOR Steph. You know, that's another thing that irritates me. Racist people, I mean. I get that some people weren't raised like me and to be honest, I'm glad that most people weren't raised like me. But at the same time, I think my upbringing has made me into a better person. Racist people are one of my pet peeves. "And what did you say? Did you do anything? I would've slapped the hell out of her if I were you!"

"It didn't bother me though, Jo." She says. I examine her face to see if I can find any faults in it to suggest that she's lying and she did actually care, but she seems genuine. "I'm a way better person than she'll ever be and I don't care if anybody thinks I shouldn't be in the program because of my skin color or because of my attitude or anything like that. I just didn't care and I didn't let her words bother me. And you shouldn't let people's judgments bother you either. You just gotta prove them wrong like you proved me wrong. I thought you were a little bit snooty, but as soon as I started talking to you, you proved me wrong." She finally gets out of the car and I get out as well. "I'm sorry, though. I didn't mean to upset you…."

"It's okay, I'm just not used to this." I shut the car door behind me and loop my wrist through the handles of the grocery bag I put my clothes inside. "I've never really had to try and make sure people like me. I used to just roll with the fact that some people don't like me but now it matters if people like me or not. I have a job where it matters if I'm liked and I'm not used to it."

"Well, like I said…. You're not a hard person to get along with."

**Alex's Point of View.**

"How much do you love me?" Her slender fingers wrap themselves around the remote control as she uses her thumb to press the pause button to the DVD player. My lips pull up into a grin and she turns her head to look at me. "On a scale of one to ten, one being the least and ten being the highest." She cracks a smile herself, flashing those beaming, pearly white teeth at me. "Because I was just thinking about something for the wedding but…"

"I love you like a fat kid loves cake, okay? I'm not gonna put a number on it." I run my fingers along the soft skin on her hip and kiss her temple. I never really used to be a big fan of the kisses and the cuddles but these days, I don't really want to miss a minute of letting her know how much she means to me. Things happen way too quickly to waste a single moment. That's why we're having a big wedding. We're not having one just because she wants one; that's not the only reason. We're having one despite the fact that I absolutely loathe the idea of having a big wedding because this could possibly be the only wedding she'll ever have. It's unfair to her to stunt the things that she wants just because I don't want them. "What was your idea for the wedding?"

"You know how my dress is gonna be pink, right?" She muses. I nod. "I was thinking we could get your tux custom made. The outside can be pink with a silver vest… and a pink tie. Or is that a big no for you? No pink tux?" A pink tux isn't really that bad. I feel like I owe it to her to at least wear what she wants me to wear. The original plan for us was to have a small wedding for friends and family, and even when that was the plan, I was going to let her put me in some goofy colored tuxedo. It's the only way I can repay her. Question. How do you repay someone that's given you everything?

I mean that. Iz has given me everything. She's given me a reason to better myself, a reason to try and make something out of my life and a reason to want to be a better person. I gotta be honest. I didn't have the slightest idea of what I wanted my life to be before I met her. I never wanted to get married or have kids or any of that stuff. I didn't even have the desire to buy my own house. But now, I'm about to get married to the love of my life, I own a house that I bought off one of my best friends and I can see myself being a good dad someday…and that's all because of her. It's crazy how one person can do that to you.

"I don't care about a pink tux." I run my fingers through the silky pieces of her thin blonde hair. It's shoulder-length now and it's just crazy to think that this time two months ago, she didn't have enough hair to squeeze into a ponytail. It's been growing back nicely since she stopped her treatments. It's been in remission since February and she hasn't had to go through chemo since March. Five months cancer free and four months chemo free is reason enough to give her the wedding she deserves. "We should do the cake tasting thing soon so I can get the cake paid for sooner rather than later."

"What kind of cake do you want? I know banana crème is your favorite but you really think that'd make a decent wedding cake?" She lifts her head up and rests her face in the crook of my neck like she always does when she's sleepy. We were watching The Fast & The Furious while we were unwinding from the long day at work that we both had, but if she's sleepy then we can go to bed. "I just feel like we should get our money's worth. If we get a banana crème cake for our wedding cake and not everybody eats it, then we have leftover cake for days."

"Red velvet then?" I suggest. "You can't really go wrong with red velvet and cream cheese." I curl my fingers around her hips and pull her onto my lap. "Forget the wedding for a couple minutes." I kiss her on her cheek, right beside her lips. "When are you gonna give me babies?" To ensure that she's secure on my lap, I fold my arms around her waist and hold her tight. "Lots and lots of babies… that's what I'm looking forward to."

She puts her hands on the back of my head and smiles at me again. "How many?"

"As many as we can get." I loosen my arms so I can rub her back. "At least two, though. I wouldn't want the only child to get lonely, so we gotta have at least two. And they can't be any more than three years apart… and we gotta have our boy first."

"Well you've got this all planned out for me, don't you?" She leans her head down and kisses me again. "Someone's got baby fever…"

"I wouldn't call it that." I just stare up at her in complete awe of her beauty. What Mere said earlier is right. Iz and I are soulmates. I really feel like she's the person I'm meant to be with for the rest of my life, but I can't quite figure out how I got so lucky to get her. I don't think I deserve her but I'm never gonna let her go. She's mine and I don't intend on letting her go. But I don't think I'd ever say that aloud. "I just wanna know when…"

"Preferably after we get married." She puts her hand to my forehead and gently pushes my head back. "But I guess we could try to make a baby sometime soon." She winks at me. "Like tonight?"

"There's no harm in trying." I grab the remote and turn the TV off. She pulls me down on top of her and starts to kiss me. There's definitely no harm in trying for a baby….

**Jo's Point of View.**

"When'd you say that the other ones were coming?" With a can of Dr. Pepper in my hand, I sit down in the corner of the sofa in Steph's living room and cross my legs. Steph's sitting at the opposite end of the couch stuffing popcorn in her mouth and scrolling through her cell phone. I admit that this is a really nice place she has here. It's nice and spacious and everything is on one floor. The entire place is carpeted unlike my place and there are no signs of mold growing anywhere. It's really neat and tidy and it looks like an apartment you could rent over in NYC. It's so clean that I would feel safe if I ate off of the floor. Completely nixing the fact that I just asked her when the other interns are coming over, I start a new conversation. "Is all this furniture in here yours?"

She swallows a mouthful of popcorn and nods. "My mom got new furniture last year and she kept this stuff in storage for me to have when I got my own place. So everything in this place is mine except for the fridge, the stove and the washer and dryer. Those came with the apartment." She points to the 60-inch flat-screen TV that's mounted onto the wall in front of where we're sitting. "This was a hand-me-down from my dad. The kitchen table is another hand-me-down…"

"Oh." I crack open my can of Dr. Pepper and take a quick sip of it. "This stuff isn't bad for your first furniture. It's nice and clean and stuff." I look around to keep marveling at the fanciness of the apartment. "And the stuff in your guest room… is that all hand-me-down stuff too?"

"Yep." She puts her feet up on the coffee table and looks over at me. "But if you have your own mattress and dresser and stuff, I can just go stick that crap back in storage. You don't have to use that stuff." She pops another three or four pieces of popcorn in her mouth and starts to chew. "What time do you want to move in tomorrow? I was thinking you'd probably want to do it tomorrow since we're off for the next two days. And the two of us could go food shopping tomorrow because my dad wants me to go to Olympia so he can give me his food card."

"…Food card?" I wrinkle my eyebrow in confusion. I've never heard of a food card before. I need to get me one of those.

"You know… the food card. I think they're really called EBT cards. The food stamp things? You know how you get a card for that? Don't tell me you've never heard of food stamps before…"

"Oh!" I've heard of food stamps before. I've never heard the card be called a "food card" before though. I've just heard them called "food stamps." "Yeah, I've heard of food stamps." I tuck my hair behind my ear. "So your dad just gives you his food stamps? He'd do that for you?"

"Well yeah." She takes her feet off the coffee table and tucks her legs underneath of her body. "He's my dad… and he worries about me. He gets like 300 bucks in food stamps every month because he's on disability. He never really uses them because my step-mom is like SUPER good at budgeting so he lets me use them to get food every now and again. He got them today and he told me to come down to Olympia to get it so I can do some shopping. And he usually gives me like 50 bucks to buy the things that food stamps won't buy. Like toilet paper and shampoo and conditioner and soap and stuff."

"That's nice of him to do." I look down at the couch cushion between my legs and sigh. I don't mean to sound antisocial but I'm really enjoying the time with just Stephanie. She let me get in the shower first and after she got out after me, we just started talking. I like it this way. "It's safe to say you never go hungry then, I guess."

"My parents don't let me go hungry. They understand that I'm still just an intern and I need a little bit of help here and there." She adjusts her glasses on her face and continues to just look at me. "That's the good thing about parents, you know? They never just abandon you…even when you're 28 and long out of their house, they still feel the need to help you get on your feet."

"…Yeah, I guess you're right." Is that really what parents are supposed to do? I wouldn't really know.

"Your parents must've been over the moon when you got into Princeton and Harvard, eh?" She cracks open her own can of soda and holds it to her mouth. "Harvard's all expensive and so is Princeton. Did they have to sell a kidney to keep you in school?"

"…Not really." Why do I feel like I'm lying to her? I'm not lying or anything like that, but I feel like I am. I feel like I'm a big liar that's just leading her to believe that I actually have parents. "…I don't have parents, Steph." I put my tongue in my cheek, embarrassed. She's looking at me like I'm a puppy that just barked for the first time in my life. I look away from her. "…I've been on my own since I was sixteen. I don't know who my mom is and I don't know who my dad is. I used to um…" I blink back tears and press my lips together. "I used to live in my car. I've been an orphan for as long as I can remember."

"…You really don't know your folks?" Her face looks like she might cry. "Jo I didn't… I didn't know… I'm so sorry."

"Don't be. I turned out fine, didn't I?" I move my hair to the other side of my shoulder so it's out of my way. "My mom left me outside of a fire station when I was two weeks old and after that, I spent all my life in foster homes… til I was sixteen, that's when I moved into my car."

"Foster homes? Is that plural?" She looks really confused and equally upset. "I thought that you get put into one foster home until you turn eighteen. They just let you live in your car like that?"

"There are ways around it… and you only stay in foster homes if the people like you." I sigh. "…But I got into Princeton and Harvard because I worked really hard for it. That's why it kind of bothers me when people think that I got everything handed to me and think that I'm prissy. Because I'm really not. I know what it means to struggle. And I know what it's like to go to bed hungry. And I don't feel sorry for myself, either. I'm NOT poor Jo. I'm not that at all, because shit happens, you know? Not everybody is blessed with good parents and people that give a shit about whether they live or die...and that doesn't matter. I wouldn't have gotten anywhere if I felt bad for myself."

"…So weren't kidding? You really can't afford much…" She looks over and puts her Dr. Pepper down on the coffee table. "…I know you don't really know me, but that doesn't matter." She scoots over on her butt so that she's next to me. "You do have me though. I can be your family… if you want." She gives me a real tight hug.

My lips tug themselves up into a sincere smile. "Thanks Steph, but you don't need to feel sorry for me." I hug her back to be polite. "Just don't tell anybody, okay? I don't want people to feel all bad for me and stuff at the hospital. I hate that."

"I would never tell anybody, Jo. Ever. I'm not like that." Before she pulls out of our hug, she combs her fingers through my hair. "I guess the good thing is that as long as you live with me, you'll never really be hungry anymore." I guess living with Steph wouldn't be so bad… Whatever, I accept the offer.

I chuckle. "I was never really that hungry. I mean…" I look up at the ceiling then back at her. "Yeah when I lived in my car I didn't have a choice but to be hungry but recently, I've gone hungry by choice." She looks at me like I'm nuts so I clear my throat to explain to her about Brynn. "This little girl that lived in my apartment building was so cute but she was always so hungry because her mom always locked her out the house so I used to make my little packets of Ramen Noodles and give the bulk of them to her. I couldn't watch a little kid starve to death while I'm a doctor. Her name was Brynn."

"You're literally a saint, Jo. Saint Jo… I'm gonna start calling you that."

"If it makes you happy." I shrug my shoulders.

**Still Jo's Point of View (lol).**

"Have any of you guys been on Dr. Avery's service yet?" Steph asks as she tops off Leah's cup with more coconut flavored vodka. I think I'm gonna be done after this next cup full because I'm really starting to feel this. I'm not drunk just yet but I'm almost there and I don't want to get drunk with people I don't know. When I'm drunk, I get all weird and extremely talkative and I just want to have sex and pass out when I'm drunk. It's a weird thing. So I usually prefer to get drunk with either close girlfriends or just by myself…that way I won't do anything I regret.

"He's married, Stephanie." Shane retorts, which makes me laugh. He's actually not as bad as he seemed at first. He's not as serious as he appeared to be in the locker room…he's actually funny. He's sitting next to me and he's halfway through his third cup of booze. He's made me laugh more times than I can count and he's only been here for a half hour so far. "What is it with you girls and married men?!"

"You thought Yang was hot until you found out that she was married, so chill." Leah downs her refill of vodka and rolls her eyes. I could get along with Leah as well. She's really sassy and a lot of the things that come out of her mouth are sarcastic and really witty. Not to mention that she's really pretty. "Work is no fun without eye-candy. Just because they're married doesn't mean we can't think they're hot."

"Thank you Leah." Steph takes a sip of her own alcohol and looks directly at me. Steph's been going out of her way to include me in on the conversations tonight and I don't really think she needs to. I'm fine laughing occasionally at jokes and drinking. I'm okay with it. But again, she drags me into the conversation. "Jo's swooning over this guy from OB."

"I am not!" I put my cup down and roll my eyes. My lips are up in a permanent smile and I'm actually really enjoying myself with them tonight. Maybe Steph's right. Maybe I'm really not a hard person to get along with. "I just think he's hot…and he is. He's sexy that's all. I'm not swooning."

Heather's eyes bug out of her head. Heather is a species all her own. She doesn't fit the mold of Leah or Steph…Heather is Heather. She's goofy and funny and really, really, REALLY weird. "Is he bald? With real big muscles? And he's a light-skin isn't he?" She pours herself some more liquor and starts talking to me. "I know exactly who you're talking about. You're talkin' about Chest Peckwell."

_Chest Peckwell? _"…I don't even know his name, but I guess. All I know is that he's hot, he works in OB, he wears pink scrubs and he could GET IT." I shrug and pick my cup of liquor back up. Glad to know I'm not the only one that thinks the guy from OB is hot.

"….By 'get it' you mean?" Shane asks. The look on his face tells that he is genuinely confused.

"I'd fuck him…. no shame. I don't even care. I'd sleep with him." I shrug my shoulders and admit it. See, this is why I hate getting drunk around people that I hardly even know. Because now Shane probably thinks I'm easy and I'm not I just think that Chest Peckwell is hot and the liquor makes me hormonal and sex-crazed. It's not a good combo.

"Why don't you just ask the guy out? It's hot when girls make the first move and you'll never know if he's single unless you ask." Shane proposes.

"I can't just go up to him and be like… hey, you're hot, date me." I shake my head. "Maybe I'll ask him out…when the cows come home."

"She also thinks Dr. Karev is hot too. The girl needs help." Steph winks at me.

"BUT HE TOTALLY IS! OH MY GOD." Leah starts gushing. _Glad I'm not alone in that either. _"And he's into blondes! His wife is skinny and blonde… I'M skinny and blonde…HELLO! We're meant to be."

"He's the biggest asshole I've ever met in my life though. He's the worst human being." I drink the last gulp of my drink and lean back against the couch. "He's a big fat jerk that needs to go get hit by the milk truck." Heather and Shane both bust out into laughter. "I'm so serious! I've never met somebody so ignorant, self-absorbed and DOUCHEY in my life. I hope nobody ever has the unfortunate displeasure of ever meeting such a despicable human being…ever."

"Damn, Jo." Leah shakes her head at me. "And here I thought you were goody-goody two shoes that didn't say much of anything." She laughs. "Dr. Karev brings it out of you."

"No, he's just the biggest butt-muncher I've ever met." I sigh. "But he's hot… how does that work? How is someone that sexy but so fucked up?"

"I hear that Dr. Avery's a real gentleman." Steph adds in.

"Nobody gives a shit about Avery but you." Heather snaps playfully at her.

"Oh wait guys…" I start. "You guys know the one they call 'McDreamy'? He could get it too." I know I said I was done after this cup, but I lean forward and fill it back up anyway. "We work in a hospital full of sexy people…. How does this work?" I swallow a small gulp of liquor.

"…I think you just need laid." Steph shakes her head at me like she's ashamed. "You swoon over Chest Peckwell, Karev AND Shepherd? You need something…. when's your birthday? I'm gonna buy you a vibrator."

I roll my eyes at her and laugh. "No thanks. I don't masturbate. I'd rather have the real thing." I pull my hair back and look over at Shane. "So you really think I should ask him out? Chest Peckwell, I mean. Should I ask him? Are you sure that's not desperate on my behalf?"

"Just start talking to him… then just ask him out for a drink. You can't go wrong there." He responds.

"…I'm gonna need a couple beers in my system before I get enough balls to ask him out. But maybe I'll do it… on Friday."


	5. Chapter 5

"Whose service are you on today?" Steph tosses me her tube of deodorant. She's all giddy and happy because she's still on Dr. Yang's service. I'm wondering exactly how she's managing to stay on her service for three days straight. She must have her lips super-glued to Yang's butt or something because I can't get on an interesting case to save my life. And plus, Steph's actually getting the opportunities to see what the inside of an OR looks like. If I keep messing around with residents and attendings that hate me, I'll NEVER see the inside of an OR.

"Robbins threw me on her service again which means I'll have to deal with Karev." I roll deodorant underneath my armpits and hand it back to Steph. I pull my scrub top over my head and adjust it. "Just give me pointers on how to properly kiss ass. At this point, I'll kiss anyone's ass to get off Pediatrics. I hate Peds. I hate the Peds attending, I hate the Peds resident, I hate the Peds floor. I hate Peds."

"Wow… your soul really is black. You hate innocent, dying children." Leah takes a jab at me while she ties her shoe.

"I don't hate children. The kids are actually all really cute." I yank my hair up into a messy bun. "I just wish I could get on a service where people actually treat me fairly."

"I'm actually on Shepherd's service today. I'd trade with you because at least Peds is interesting. Neuro is so boring I might fall asleep." Leah puts her own hair up in a ponytail and shuts her locker door. "If you want to switch we can. Innocent dying children has to be better than watching people seize and drool all day."

"Why would she switch with you? So she can screw up simple procedures because she's too busy drooling over McDreamy?" Steph nudges me on my shoulder.

"Shut up." I mumble. "I totally would switch with you though. But apparently Dr. Robbins asked for me specifically… can't imagine why."

"Oooh she asked for you SPECIFICALLY." Leah winks her eye at me and laughs. "You know she's a lez right? Maybe she likes your butt… Maybe she wants eye candy to look at while she works."

I put my finger up to stop her. "Okay first of all, she's married to the ortho goddess. Second of all, I'm not gay."

"You don't have to be gay to be fun to look at." Steph says under her breath. "You're eye candy."

"You are very fun to look at, Jo." Heather pops into the conversation, agreeing with Steph. I flip my hair all conceited and animated like you see on those movies where girls think they're the shit. Not to be all self-absorbed, but I know I'm pretty. Still and yet, I don't think that's the reason Robbins requested me. I don't know exactly why she requested me but I don't think it has anything to do with me being pretty. Heather fixes her wispy, shoulder-length hair and sits down on the benches. "I'm on Dr. Bailey's service today with Dr. Grey…anybody wanna trade?"

"I'm NOT going near Medusa…you got that." Leah shuts her down quickly. "I'd rather fall asleep on Neuro all day then spend the day with Medusa and The Nazi. That's equivalent to the death sentence."

"She hasn't really been much of a Nazi lately, though." I sit down next to Heather and look around the corner from the lockers at Shane. I know that he's listening to us but out of respect, he changes on the other side of the lockers so he doesn't look at us while we're half naked. "Ever since that anesthesiologist's been piping her down… she's been nice." I lean forward and rest my hands on my knees. "Me and Steph decided to call her BCB."

"…BCB?" Heather asks.

"Booty Call Bailey." Steph takes the liberty of explaining to her. We came up with that nickname last night, actually. I've only been living with Steph for two days and I'm already glad that I did it. It's not that I like the fact that there's so much food in the apartment that I've eaten proper breakfasts, lunches and dinners. It's not that I don't have to wear shoes in the shower because there's no mold in there. It's not even that my bed is so comfortable that I've been sleeping dreamlessly these last two nights. No, it's not any of those reasons.

I actually enjoy Steph's company. We stay up late at night just talking about work and getting to know each other. We spent our first off day loading the house up with groceries, towing my car back to my new place and fixing up my new room. We spent our entire off day yesterday watching TV and eating ice cream out of the container. Needless to say that I'm just really glad that I decided to move in with her. I honestly don't regret a single moment.

"Yeah, well I'm doing outpatient surgery with Kepner today…" Shane finally joins in our conversation. "I'm gonna be cutting ALL. DAY. LONG."

"Kepner's a dud." Leah says.

"Yeah, nobody cares, Shane." I playfully punch him in his kneecap and laugh. "So… Leah's with McDreamy, Heather's with BCB and Medusa… Steph's with Lord Yang and Me? I'm stuck with…" I tune my nose up just thinking about my services for the day. "McPreppy and McDouchebag."

Leah really gets a kick outta that. "McPreppy and McDouchebag….shut up Jo." She laughs pretty hard. "But seriously guys…. We should probably go. They're most likely waiting for us." She glances up at the clock on the wall. "We're gonna be late for rounds."

"I'm just gonna kill myself." I shrug and stand up. And I really might just off myself today. I'm working with Dr. Karev all day… I might as well be dead already.

**Alex's Point of View.**

"Wilson, you're with me today… let's go." As soon as she shows her face on the Peds floor, I call her out. If she doesn't act like an idiotic entitled little brat today, I might apologize to her for Monday. I can tell by the look on her face that she'd rather rake up pig shit than be with me and that's fine. I don't care if she hates me. I'm here to teach her not befriend her. With stiff legs, she stalks over to me and puts a stack of folders on the nurses' station counter. "What are those?"

"Dr. Robbins asked me to get labs for the jaundice baby." She opens up the folders and starts filing through them. "She said to present them to you…."

"What to the labs say?"

"…That his bilirubin is still elevated."

"No crap. I want numbers." I take a quick sip of my coffee and wait for her to rattle off numbers. "And what to elevated bilirubin counts tell us?"

"…That the UV isn't strong enough so we should up him to a full UV incubator and monitor his progress slowly. If his levels don't change then we should consider looking into surgery." She's not even looking at me at this point. She's looking down at my shoes. "Even though his bilirubin's been up for a week now we should still monitor it…"

"If the bilirubin hasn't gone down yet, what makes you think that it ever will without surgery?"

"I don't know…" She puts the labs back down on the counter and finally looks up at me, desperation in her eyes. "…Can I go down to the pit? If I'm not needed here, I'd much rather spend time in the pit with Dr. Webber..."

"Let's go." I pick up the labs and my coffee and walk through the doors of the NICU. She lazily follows me back to the west wing. I've never been very good with apologies. Apologizing isn't something that I've had a lot of experience with. The last time I can recall apologizing, I was fifteen and trying to get out of spending time in juvi. It didn't work, for the record. I still spent three months in the hole and apologizing didn't do much but make me feel like a dope. "Since the baby doesn't seem to be responding to the light therapy, we're going to have to start exhausting other options." I unlatch the locks on the incubator and open it up. "Have you placed an IV before?"

"In a baby? No." She stands right beside me and looks on into the incubator. "Is it any different from placing an IV in an adult?"

"The concept is the same but actually doing it is different." I grab two pairs of gloves from the glove dispenser on the wall and hand her a pair. "What's gonna happen is this; we're gonna place the IV and then we're gonna hook some immunoglobulin into it…see if that helps the little guy out." I grab an alcohol pad so I can sterilize the area I'll insert the IV into. "For babies, their veins are—"

"…Wait, so you think it could be a blood disorder that's making him so sick?" She looks at me with wonder written all over her face. Her eyes are brown…but not the kind of brown that I see all the time. They're a really, really bright brown. They might be hazel but I don't want to spend too long looking at them. _She's kind of… _"Sorry to interrupt you… but do you really think it's a blood disorder? Because isn't immunoglobulin a treatment for blood disorders?"

"It's clearly not a liver malfunction because he's not responding to light therapy. So we've gotta start looking at other causes, such as blood disorders." I hand her the little alcohol pad. "Good catch." I wait for her little nervous hands to take the sterilization pad. "If I tell you the most viable vein is in his foot, would you be able to insert the IV?" _It's not that hard to be nice to her. I guess I don't really want her to hate me. _I grab the baby's foot and hold it in my hand so it's nice and still for her. "It's just like an adult…just tinier." My eyes wander over to her again. Her fingers are so slender and her fingernails are neat and trimmed. And she smells good, but I'm pretty sure it's her hair that I'm smelling. _She's really… _

"I think I can do it." She tears open the sterilization pad and softly wipes the baby's foot. "That right there… that's the vein I use, isn't it?" I nod my head to avoid talking too much. I want to see what she knows. She can't learn from me coaching her every step of the way of doing an IV. "Okay…." After she sterilizes the area, she picks up the needle. Her hands are shaking pretty badly. "Am I…. am I going in at the right angle?"

"You tell me." I take the needle off her and put it back down on the soft blanket that's cushioning the little guy. "You're fine, Wilson. When you start to second guess yourself is when you start making mistakes. Take a deep breath and keep your hands from shaking." I put the needle back in her hands and hold the baby's foot still again. "Easy now…"

She steadies her hands and pushes the needle inside the baby's foot. Gently, she twists the needle and pushes it upwards so she's completely inside the vein. The baby's being a little trooper about it as well. "…Can you hand me the surgical tape so I can secure it?" I can tell by the look on her face that she's proud of herself. I tear off a tiny strip of tape and hand it to her. She straps the tape onto the base of the IV so it doesn't fall out and as soon as she does that, the baby starts to cry for the first time. "…Oh no… oh, I'm sorry buddy…" Her voice is really soft and friendly. _She's really good at this. _

"Good job with that. That wasn't half bad." I clean up the area around where we just worked and get ready to hook the fluid into his IV. "You can't take a moment to steady yourself like that, though. It's okay to do it on a baby but if you do that in front of an adult patient, they'll think you have no idea what you're doing and it'll freak them out. Don't second guess yourself, Wilson. You did that perfectly."

"Thank you Dr. Karev…. For letting me do that." She takes off her gloves and tosses them into the wastebasket. "Um… look, I think we might've got off on the wrong foot on Monday… I didn't mean to come off as insubordinate or rude or anything like that."

"Nah, don't sweat it." I take my own gloves off and throw them away as well. "I'm sorry for Monday as well." She takes a step back and puts her hands in the pockets of her scrub pants and looks around. I think I might've been wrong about her. I don't really think she got through med school the same way Iz did. She just doesn't really come across as the type that'll take her clothes off. But if I didn't know any better, I'd still say that she doesn't belong here. She looks like she belongs in the pages of a magazine. Her face bears resemblance to that of child. Her skin is so smooth and naturally tanned white, only one main impurity marking it which is that of a beauty mark that resides next to her mouth. Her eclectic bright brown eyes hold innocence deep in them and her lips are full, plump and really soft pink. Her hair fans out at her temples and forehead then neatly pulls back into a bouncy, curly ponytail. _Stop looking at her. _But she's so…

"Is there anything else we should do?" She breaks me out of my thoughts that were immersed in her. I've just never quite seen somebody quite like her. I've never seen somebody with eyes so strangely brown as hers are. "Just monitor him and see if his bilirubin goes down? If it goes down, should we discharge him? What are we supposed to tell his parents when they come back?"

"We tell them that their baby boy is going to be just fine." She sure does worry a lot about stuff though. "These people have been dealing with a sick baby for weeks now. They understand that things aren't just gonna happen overnight. They've been working towards getting their baby home… it's not unusual to work towards getting the things you want, Princess." Her face changes from completely enchanted to disgruntled. She looks confused…and I guess she has a right to be. _No more being nice to her. No more of that at all. _

"…I know?" She says that with a questioning tone. "I respect that."

"If you respect it so much then you wouldn't sound so surprised that the world isn't all rainbows and butterflies." I stuff the chart and the labs under my arm and start walking towards the exit of the NICU. "Look Wilson, you have a real knack for Peds… really, you do. But you gotta understand that this is a real place and these are real people dealing with real sick babies. I know it's not what you're used to, but it's reality. If you're gonna make it here, you have to know that."

"...Whoa, wait…" She starts walking really fast to keep up with me. "But I know all of this. Do you give everyone this speech?" She seems really confused. "Dr. Karev, I know the world sucks…believe me, I know. I'm nothing like that… I wouldn't have gone into medicine if I didn't already know that shit—crap….CRAP happens." Once we get out of the NICU, she leans against the nurse's station. "Just… do you have anything else for me to do today?"

"Yeah, kid in room 309's parents have been waiting for him to pass a marble for three days. Go check his stool sample." I scroll through the electric chart to give her the chart for the kid. "Might wanna take that honker on your wrist off before you start digging around."

"…My watch?" She glances down at the shiny silver and pink watch that's on her left wrist. That thing has to be worth MONEY.

"Yep. Daddy would be mighty disappointed if you got a kid's crap all over it, wouldn't he Princess?"

"…Can you just stop calling me that?" She puts her hand in her pocket to hide the watch from me. She sounds really cool about it…like I'm not making her all that mad aside from the fact that she just wants me to stop calling her Princess.

"Maybe later." I tilt my head so I can still catch a little glimpse of the watch. "How much that thing cost?"

"…I don't know." She shrugs her shoulders and I can't help but stare at her lips. Her jaw shifts from left to right out of nervousness and her very full bottom lip catches underneath her top teeth. "…It was a gift." Her lips look…incredibly soft. Her top lip is fuller and thicker than her bottom one and the initial curvature of them flare out into a heart shape. I wonder if they're as soft as they look… _Stop. _

Out of frustration—not anger, my hands bawl up into fists. "…Go check on the jaundice baby again. Get new labs and have someone page me when you get the results."

"But didn't we just hang the immunoglobulin? Shouldn't we give it more time to work?"

"Then go monitor his stats." I close up the chart and walk away. I can't stand to be in her presence anymore.

**Jo's Point of View.**

I don't understand what just happened. Dr. Karev has a very profound way of confusing me. I swear I thought that just for a second he and I were making a breakthrough. I thought we were starting to understand each other and we both understood that we made poor first impressions. But he's back to calling me names now? I really just don't quite understand what's happening. At this point, I'm not sure if he hates me or if he likes me or if it's a matter of both him hating me and liking me. I just don't get it. I just really hope that I can be off Dr. Robbins' service after today.

I stuff my hands in my scrub pants pockets and start walking back to the NICU. I walk through the automatic double doors and make my way back to the jaundice baby we were working on. Dr. Karev said to monitor his stats, so I guess I'll start by taking his temperature since that's the easiest. What I don't understand is how there are a bunch of wires hooked up to this baby that punch his stats into a computer. Why the hell do I have to monitor them if a computer does it for me? I pull apart the lock on the incubator and open it up. I've been working with this baby since my second day of internship and I haven't seen his parents yet. Dr. Karev says that they come by every now and again but I never saw them.

"Okay, buddy… sorry to disturb you again." I pick up a thermometer and comb a little patch of his hair back away from his ear. He's asleep; content with lying on his belly with his head to the side. "I know. First I stick you in your foot with a needle and now I'm bugging you while you're trying to snooze. I'm sorry." I put the doppler part of the thermometer inside his tiny little ear and wait for it to beep. "I don't know when your mommy and daddy are coming back… if they come back at all…but I'll stick around until they do." I pick up one of his monitors that's sticking to his chest and take off the adhesive pad to put a new one on it. "You don't mind if I slum it with you, do you?"

I could totally see myself specializing in Peds. I mean clearly the NICU isn't all just cute little babies that make you smile all day. But I think I could handle it. I could handle taking care of them and nursing them back to health. I don't want children of my own, so I might as well work with them. I genuinely don't want to have kids someday. I'd probably be the worst mother in the world and I don't feel like failing a child. I don't really think that any child deserves me as a mom. Now I'm not saying that I wouldn't love my kid, because I would. I'd be a heartless bitch if I spent nine months sharing a body with a baby and not love it. I'd love it to death. I'm just not cut out for motherhood and that's that.

If I were to have kids someday though, I would be sure to do it right. I wouldn't be perfect but I'd be a lot better than my own parents were. I would try really hard to make sure they don't have to know about the foster system. I wouldn't go a day without telling them that I love them, either. I would really try to be a good mom but I don't really think that kind of lifestyle is for me.

As soon as I attach the new sticky monitor to the baby's chest, his big eyes pop open and he looks right up at me. "Is this you asking me to leave you alone?" I use my two fingers to stroke his hair. His eyes are big and brown and he has the most perfect little lips and nose. He's so cute… "I can stop talking to you if you want me to. I bet you're not really used to being talked to. Dr. Karev probably doesn't talk to you much, does he?" He blinks his eyes and keeps his gaze fixated on me. He's really focused for a tiny little baby. He's gonna be smart. "Dr. Karev's a big jerk, isn't he?" When I say that, the baby cracks a smile. It might just be gas but I like to think that he agrees with me. "So I'm not the only one that sees it…"

You have to be a special kind of person to work with children all day. It really makes me wonder if Karev is as bad as he seems. He can't exactly be mean to kids if he's specializing in Peds. Maybe there's something underneath that asshole-ness that he refuses to outwardly show.

"I want her off the service. I mean it. I'm not working with her anymore." I stop dead in my tracks when I hear that. I take a couple steps back and hide around the corner. _Is he talking about me? _He told me to page him with the results of baby Jacob's new labs. He's not answering anyone's pages so I just thought that I should bring them to him. I know I'm just a crappy little intern but I really think that the labs suggest that baby Jacob can go home later on today or tomorrow. The immunoglobulin is working. _What did I do?_ I hold my breath and keep listening. "I don't care what you do with her. Send her to Bailey, Torres, Shepherd…I don't care. I want her off the service. I can't work with her. She's insubordinate, won't follow directions… I can't work with her anymore."

"Need I remind you what you were like as an intern? I never kicked you off my service because you were insubordinate or not following my directions. She's an INTERN, Alex. DEAL WITH IT. You're getting paid to TEACH her something." Dr. Robbins is taking back to him. _What the hell did I do? I did everything he asked of me! _"I'M the only one that can kick her off MY service and until she shows me the level of disrespect you're saying she shows, she's on my service. Why do you think I stuck her with you, Alex? I stuck her with you because she IS you. Quick learner, good recall…she WANTS to learn. Put on your big boy pants and DEAL with it."

I don't even know what I did. Why does he hate me so much? I'm really trying to pay attention, keep on my p's and q's and listen to him… but he's making it so hard. I really don't know what I've done. Should I even give him these labs?

"I got called down to OB for a consult and I'll take her with me on that. Go pull yourself together, Alex. I'm sticking her with you for rounds later." I swallow my pride and round the corner with the labs in my hand. Dr. Robbins smiles as soon as she sees me. "Hey Wilson…what's up?"

"…I have these labs for Dr. Karev." As hard as I'm trying right now, I still can't mask the tears in my voice that are threatening to fall from my eyes. _He doesn't like to wait until he asks for the results of the labs… just tell him. _Keeping my head down so I don't look at him, I just start rattling off the results. "Jacob Weston's bilirubin is steadily decreasing at about…. one level per half hour…if it keeps going at this rate it should fall into normal range in about seven hours…he can go home tonight or tomorrow morning. His stats are stable and the nurse gave him four ounces of formula that he kept down. He's stable…"

"Great." He mumbles under his breath and snatches the labs off me.

"Wilson, I have a consult down on OB that I want you to assist me with. Come on." Dr. Robbins motions for me to follow her and I gladly….GLADLY do.

**Alex's Point of View.**

"Alex? Baby, are you okay?" She puts her hand to my forehead to check my temperature…but I'm not feeling sick. I feel fine. I'm just not in a good mood and I need to go to bed for the night. "You hardly touched your food… do you need me to fix you some soup or something else to eat?" She presses her lips to my temple and I resist the urge to push her away from me. I don't really want to be touched by her. It's nothing that she did—or anyone did, for that matter. It's just the fact of the matter that I'm in a bad mood and I don't want to be bothered. I put my fork down in my plate of spaghetti and push my chair out from the kitchen table.

"I'm fine." I mumble and pick my plate up. One of the things I love the most about Iz is that she cooks every night. Now to some people, that might not really be that big of a deal, but it is to me. I think it's amazing that she puts in the same amount of hours that I put in every day at the hospital and she still manages to come home, do laundry and cook a full course dinner, complete with dessert. I've always admired that about her. "I'm not hungry, babe… I had a long day." I open up the microwave and stick my plate inside it. Maybe I'll be hungry later. "I discharged three babies, operated on one and admitted four. I'm tired."

"Oh really?" She wraps her arms around my waist and puts her head in the middle of my back. "Tough day. You want a massage after you get out of the shower?"

"That sounds nice." My lips tug up into the first smile I've smiled all day. I think I'm starting to feel better now. Crazy how Iz just makes me feel so much better. That's what I was missing all day. I was missing her. Clearly I wasn't thinking, but now it just makes so much sense. I was doing…what I was doing today and I couldn't get my mind off it—off her rather, and all I needed was Iz to take my mind off what it was on. I make a mental note and tuck it away in my brain for the next time I'm forced to work with her. Matter fact, she's not even a her anymore. She's an IT. She's an IT and I don't even want to think about IT.

Still and yet, I feel a little bit guilty about just thinking about IT.


	6. Chapter 6

"Actually, why don't I just text you?" I shove my hand in my pocket and take out my cell phone. "It's just that my schedule is all messed up and I really don't know what time is a good time for me. This week I work two days on two days off which is really hectic but starting on Monday I work every second day… it's weird." I go to create a new contact on my phone and look up at him. _God he's so cute._ I had an awful day today up until the point when I went down to OB with Dr. Robbins. My day got so much better in OB. "You know…. life on an intern." Playfully, I wink at him.

He looks me up and down like he's been doing all day. I notice that his eyes tend to freeze at my waist every time he does that. This time, I watch as his eyes stop on my chest and come back up to my mouth, then finally to my eyes. I snap my fingers to get his attention and stick my tongue out at him. "My face is up here…not down there. If you're gonna look down there, you could at least…take me to dinner first or something." I wink again. Also, if I'm not good at anything else in my life, I kick ASS at flirting. I flirt really well…and I've been doing it all day. I wasn't all that popular in high school…I was kind of a nerd. But I DID get voted biggest flirt of my graduating class.

"You're not gonna blow me off are you? If I did take you to dinner…" He rests his hand on the doorframe and tilts his head with a lopsided grin. He has really white teeth and a really nice smile. "You're not gonna pull one of those 'don't call me, I'll call you' kind of things? It'd really suck if I spent all this time with you today and I can't even get a phone call or a text message…"

"Can't you just settle for seeing me here tomorrow? I think I'll be back in OB tomorrow and even if I'm not… you can come find me." With my phone still in my hand, I cross my arms and carelessly flip my hair over my shoulder. "Or would you miss me way too much? I tend to have that effect on people."

"Whoa, whoa, whoa… what makes you think you'll be able to deal with not seeing me?" He scoffs.

"Face it vagina dude… I'm WAY out of your league." I'm really not that conceited, I swear. I'm just flirting so don't get the wrong impression. Like I said before, I KNOW for a fact that I'm not ugly by any means. But I'm not conceited like that. "I'm still trying to figure out how you got my attention, actually. Because I never look at guys like you…" Which is actually a lie. He's totally and completely my type. I don't really discriminate against boys but I do tend to be attracted to biracial boys with nice smiles and nice bodies and funny personalities. I've had three serious boyfriends in my life and they've all been kind of the same.

My first boyfriend was the best boyfriend I've ever had. He was really tall and he played on my high school's football team. He was Steph's skin-tone…maybe a little darker and he was so nice to me. He was literally the nicest boy I've ever dated in my life, but he moved and that was that. Vagina dude kind of reminds me of my first boyfriend. He's handsome, funny and he seems really nice.

"Oh so you're just gonna act like it wasn't my devastatingly good looks that caught your attention? You're not all that special." He jokes. I watch again as his eyes wander all over my body…they stop at my waist then come back up to my face once more. "…But you do look a lot better in jeans as opposed to scrubs…" This time after he looks at my boy though, he licks his lips.

"Can't say I've never heard that before." I look over and catch a glimpse of Stephanie waving her hand at me, signaling that she's ready to go. "So are you gonna give me your number before I go home for the night or not?"

"Here." He takes my phone off me and starts punching his number into it. "I will be seeing you tomorrow though, right?" When he's done, he hands my phone back to me and starts to stare at my lips.

"I promise you'll see me tomorrow. Goodnight, Jason."

**X X X **

As soon as Steph opens the door to our house, I walk back to the bathroom. I always get in the shower first because I don't spend nearly as much time in the shower as Steph does. Steph likes to soak in the shower and use all the hot water so to compromise, we decided that I should go first. I shut the door behind me and turn on the light above the sink. When I catch a glimpse of myself, I'm a little bit taken aback by what I see. I look really tired—I am really tired, don't get me wrong but I didn't think it'd show this bad on my face.

Today started out shitty but all in all, it turned out to be an okay day I think. I'm just gonna stop letting Dr. Karev get to me. He has something against me for some reason and I really just don't know what his problem is. It's not my responsibility to figure out what his issue is so I'm just not even gonna let it bother me. It's whatever at this point. I don't know what his problem with me and even Dr. Robbins said that I didn't do anything wrong. I think he's just looking for somebody to boss around and I just so happen to be his victim.

I grab the rim of my shirt and pull it over my head. I toss it over in the hamper we keep in the corner of the bathroom. In order to save on the water bill, Steph and I both agreed that we'll wash our clothes together…we just have to be sure to sort through what's mine and what's hers whenever everything's all clean. I don't think it'd be that hard to do because I'm a size bigger than Steph in both jeans and shirts. She wears smalls, I wear mediums. She wears size fours and I wear fives.

I unbutton my jeans and pull them down. I shove them in the hamper with my shirt and walk over to the shower. Maybe tomorrow after work I'll try out the bathtub. The way the bathroom is set up is kind of weird. On one side of it, the sink and the toilet are right across from each other and if you round a sharp corner, the shower is there and about ten feet away from the shower is the tub. I think this bathroom was built with handicapped people in mind because the toilet doesn't have a handle to flush it. There's a button on the side that flushes it and the bowl part of it is HUGE. I almost fell in the other day. Also, the bathtub is one of those walk-in ones. There are jet-streams on all corners of it and there's a little hump inside it that acts as a seat. This is honestly a bathroom I could see in my dreams.

I reach inside the shower and turn the nozzle to start the water. Just as I find the right temperature of my water, the bathroom door opens up and Steph walks inside with me. "I threw that pizza in the oven along with some frozen French fries. I know it's not much but I know you don't feel like cooking and neither do I."

"You're right, I don't feel like cooking…but I'm starving so thanks for that. I was just gonna make myself a pack of noodles." I take my bra and my underwear off and put them both in the hamper as well. I hide my nakedness behind the wall and peer around to look at her. She's sitting on the toilet but I can't see anything besides the side of her buttcheek. "Can you hand me a razor? And the shampoo and conditioner?"

"Your shampoo and conditioner are both in the shower hanging on the shower caddy." She grabs toilet paper and wipes herself. "And the razors are in the shower caddy as well."

"No, gimme that shampoo. I wanna use that one in the brown bottle…it looks like it smells good. I hate the way that purple shit smells." I respectfully look away from her as she gets up off the toilet and pulls her pants up.

"There's no way in hell you're using that shampoo. That's mine and you can't use it." She busily tosses her curls up into a ponytail and I just stare at her. Is she serious about the damn shampoo? It's shampoo… "Jo, you seriously can't use my shampoo. Your hair will fall out or something along the lines of that. I'll run to the store tomorrow after work and grab you some new shampoo but you can't use mine. It's for women of color…okay?"

"…Is there really a difference?" I can't help but crack a little smile at that. "Like…if I used black people shampoo and you used white people shampoo, would it really matter?" I slide open the glass door and step into the shower.

"I don't know if anything seriously would happen but I'm not chancing it." She laughs right along with me.

"Maybe my hair would curl up all crazy like yours!" I tilt my head back and get my hair wet underneath the spray. "…Steph, you still there?"

"Yeah, I'm here… what do you need?"

"…I was just thinking that I don't think I ever thanked you…for letting me move in with you, I mean. I don't think you understand how much this BEATS living in my old place." I turn around and let the water hit the front of my body. I really didn't properly thank her. If it wasn't for her, I'd be sloshing around wearing flip flops in my old shower right now, preparing to go to sleep on an empty stomach. "So thank you."

"I told you that you didn't have to thank me. I was going to ask you regardless. Even if you had a super nice apartment and stuff… I would've still asked you. I wouldn't have asked anybody else but you. Leah's disgusting—she doesn't like to clean up after herself. Heather's so irresponsible with things that it's not even funny…and what the hell do I look like living with Shane? At least you're a clean person and you're responsible. I won't have to hound you for rent money."

"Still….I feel like I owe you a thank you. The thing is that I didn't live in a good place and you gave me a good place… so shut up and say 'You're welcome, Jo.' Okay?"

"…You're welcome Jo."

**Alex's Point of View.**

For the third time in less than ten minutes, I look over at the clock and sigh. It feels like I've been lying here for an hour when in reality, I've only been lying down for half an hour. I can already tell where this night going…and I'm not going to like it. I've had my fair share of nights like this of course. But all these nights usually came from me staying up at night worrying about what Iz was doing back at the hospital while she was staying there. That's the last time I can recall having a night like this. I don't even want to think about the reason that I'm lying awake tonight because it pisses me off that the very reason I'm having trouble sleeping tonight isn't the same reason it was the last time.

I look over at the spot next to me and make sure that she's still asleep. When I'm sure that she is I get out of the bed, careful not to wake her. She stirs softly but remains in a deep, peaceful slumber. Since I can't sleep, it's no use for me to just lie here waiting when I know that I'm not going to sleep anytime soon. I walk out of the bedroom and go down the hall to the staircase. I go into the living room and plop down on the couch and turn the TV on. Maybe if I just allow myself to think about it for a little while and get it all out of my system then I'll be fine. I already made plans to go to work tomorrow, request for IT to be my intern for the day and then I'm going to try to put the way I'm feeling aside and get to know who she is as a person.

Maybe I'm just confused. Because I swear I'm changing but then again I don't feel like I am. I'm pretty sure the reason I'm as messed up as I am right now is because it's been a month, two weeks and three days…but who's counting, right? It's been that long and I haven't even thought about it until today…and that's a change for me. It really is. Because I don't usually go longer than a week without it but it's been forever and I haven't even thought about it.

When Iz first got sick, I completely lost all interest for it. She was my main focus, you know? I didn't even have time to think about anything else besides taking care of her and making sure she was okay… sex didn't even cross my mind, and it still doesn't cross my mind as much as it used to. It's not that I'm not attracted to her because I am—I'm just as attracted to Iz as I've ever been. I just can't…for the life of me, I can't figure out why it never crossed my mind when I see Iz naked all the time but it was the first thing I thought about today when I really got a good look at her.

I've wanted and lusted after many girls before, but the thing is… I usually get them when I want them. No exaggeration there, either. When I was fifteen, I thought my high school nurse was hot. She totally was though. She wasn't any older than about twenty six or twenty seven and she was totally hot. I wanted her real bad and one day during lunch, I had a "nosebleed" and I went to see her and never left her office until the last period of the day. That's not really the most ideal way for a kid to lose his virginity but that's just how it happened. Case and point, I wanted the nurse and so I had the nurse.

When I first got my job here, I wanted Iz so bad. I wanted Iz so bad that I could taste her. It took me a while to finally get her and keep her but I finally did it and now she's mine. Again, I wanted her and I got her.

I'm just not sure what's gonna happen with the fact that I want the intern and I can't have the intern. I have excellent will-power but I'm terrified that I'm gonna do something I regret if I'm ever alone with her. I'm not sure if I'd ever forgive myself if I cheated on Iz. I _do _have quite the history but if there's one thing I'm not, it's a cheater. I'm not a cheater and I've never been a cheater when I'm in a serious committed relationship like the one I'm in with Iz. It bothers the hell outta me that I think that I might consider it if it was with the intern.

I really don't want to go back to my old ways but it's seriously all I've been thinking about. I worked so hard to change this shit about myself. I'm way too mature these days to be taking chicks to on-call rooms and doing my business in there but the only thing that I could think about today was taking her to an on-call room and spending a good two…maybe even three hours in there. I'm also way too committed to Iz to even fantasize about another chick but here I am…imagining that the little prissy intern I got saddled with is most likely amazing in the sack.

I'm pissing myself off so bad with this, though. I've been with myself for 32 whole years and I still can't figure out my own logic. I don't get how I have an ex-model for a fiancé and I still want an intern. _Because the intern is fucking hot. _I can't be nice to her. I can't work with her and be nice to her when I think about her the way I think about her. I'm desperate at this point though. It's getting to the point that I'm losing sleep over this. I'm losing sleep over her and that's not good.

I don't know how to shake this. I have to come up with another alternative because clearly being standoffish towards her isn't helping, otherwise I wouldn't be in this predicament right now. I need to try something else…maybe being nicer will help. I don't know…. I'll ask Mere tomorrow. She'll know exactly what to do.

**X X X **

"So you're thinking about ditching Izzie for Ponytail McGee?" Cristina's walking right beside me, mirroring my every single step like an obnoxious four year old. "Every single day you never cease to surprise me. First you tell me that you don't wanna be evil spawn anymore and you wanna get married and be all angelic…then you present me with this? I gotta admit that you keep me guessing."

"See this is exactly why I didn't want to tell you…this is why I was looking for Mere because you clearly don't get it." I adjust my white coat because the weight of the electronic chart in my pocket is weighing it down on one side. "Never did those words come out of my mouth. Never did I say that I don't wanna marry Iz anymore because I still do." Out of stress, I comb my fingers through my hair and continue to walk down the hallway of the first floor with her so we can grab the interns for rounds. "I'm just saying that I'm a man and I have needs and those needs haven't been fulfilled in a while and I found myself thinking about fulfilling those needs with…her." I really wish Mere was here. I wish she didn't decide to take the day off because Zola's running a fever. "Does that constitute as cheating?"

"Totally not cheating." We both reach the elevator at the same time and she pushes the button to call it down to our floor. "I mean if you told Izzie that you thought about that, she'd probably get all mad and go batshit crazy on you, but it's totally not cheating. Sometimes I imagine that Owen's a heart while we're going at it… it makes it a lot more exciting ." She shrugs.

I step onto the elevator and step aside so she can stand next to me. "Yeah, I don't think that's the same thing. It's not like I'm fantasizing about screwing a pancreas… I'm fantasizing about screwing another woman. Somehow I think Iz would understand if I said I imagined that I had sex with a pornstar but if she heard that it was another girl that works her, I think she'd freak and rightfully so."

"So don't tell her." She pushes the button to go to the third floor and the elevator doors close. "Why don't you go home tonight and get your rocks off with your fiancé…and she doesn't have to know that you wish she was an intern. Just make sure you don't scream out the intern's name in the throes of passion because that would warrant a dumping and no wedding." She takes a sip of the coffee that she grabbed from the coffee cart. "By the way, how are you feeling about the wedding now that you're falling in love with an intern? How are your feet? Are they freezing yet?"

"My toes are nice and toasty and again… you don't get it. I'm not falling in love with the stupid intern I just think she's hot. There's a difference." I sigh. "The intern's a bitch. I would never in a million years even think about dropping Iz for that bitch… she's a royal pain in my ass. But she's hot and that's my entire dilemma. Her personality sucks, it's her looks that I'm in love with."

"Is she hotter than Izzie?"

"Definitely not." The elevator finally stops moving and the doors open up. "I'm just trying to figure out why in the world I wasn't even thinking about sex until yesterday. Iz and I haven't touched each other months and I wasn't even thinking about it. I was just thinking about if she was gonna be okay. Why all of a sudden am I back to sex-crazed me?"

"You sound like you have a real case here." She turns and looks at me. "You want my expert opinion?" I slightly nod my head, just a little bit afraid of what she might actually say to me. Mere's usually really good when it comes to my relationship advice. The only advice I ever take seriously from Cristina is work related advice. But hey…at this point, anything helps. "I think you should at least try to befriend the girl. If you can't sleep with her, at least you guys can be friends… and who knows? You might find that you actually like being her friend."

"…Yeah, I doubt it." I yank open the door to get into the intern locker room and hold it for her to walk inside first. "But I'll give it a try." I walk in after Cristina and sit by the sinks. I don't want to walk too far inside just in case the girls in here are still naked. Even though they're nothing little interns, they still deserve some degree of privacy when they're getting dressed.

"Murphy, you're on Bailey's service… Brooks go down to Neuro with Shepherd… Ross you're with me…" I listen as Cristina rattles off their assignments. Everybody sounds like they're happy with their assignments so far. I haven't heard any disgruntled moans and groans yet. "Edwards you're also on Dr. Bailey's service for the day…she's without Dr. Grey so she needs two sets of hands. Wilson, Dr. Karev requested you on Pediatrics for the day so go up there and with him…the rest of you go to the pit and don't kill anyone."

"…Dr. Yang?" I hear her voice and she sounds upset, which makes me chuckle. She really needs to get over herself. "…Isn't there ANY other service I can be put on? It's just that… I've been on Pediatrics for the last three days and I feel like my education is being compromised by me not being allowed to go on any other service and—"

"Nobody cares, hairball. You were requested on Pediatrics and that's where you go. If you have an issue with it, you can take that up with Dr. Robbins not me."

"Right…sorry." As soon as she apologizes, Cristina walks out of the room with intern Ross following closely behind her.

Well here goes nothing for the day.

**Jo's Point of View.**

"Look alive. We're going to work on the actual Peds floor today…no NICU for the first half of the day…. Look like you want to learn something." The tone of his voice is different today but still condescending towards me. His voice is more cheerful today. No offense, but it's hard to be happy at work when all the residents and attendings pick on you. Even Dr. Yang chimed in on the name calling. What is it with me? Why do they hate me? They don't call Steph or Leah or Heather names. They call them by their last names…why do I get all the names thrown at me? I don't know, maybe I'm being a baby, but it really does hurt my feelings how they don't even give me the respect to learn my name.

"Okay." I whisper and keep following him down a long, yellow hallway. I really don't want to be on Pediatrics anymore. Can't I just go down to OB again? At least Jason knows my name…and at least he treats me like I'm actually wanted. I'm nothing but a big inconvenience to Dr. Karev. Today really might be the day that I cry. I've been holding it in and holding it in for these three days but I don't know if I can anymore. We get to the room of a little kid that's still fast asleep. My hands are shaking really badly because I want to cry but I steady them and present for him. "…Kelsey Parker, four years old… she's waiting for a kidney transplant."

"Yep and UNOS called, there's a kidney coming from Florida for her today." He walks over to the little girl's bed and gently pulls covers away from her. "Her parents are on their way here, her surgery's scheduled for this afternoon." He pushes a button on a monitor above the baby girl's head and it starts softly beeping. I'm not sure what that monitor does. "I thought about asking Dr. Wilson to scrub in with Robbins and me on the transplant, but I heard through the grapevine that she wanted off Peds… have anybody else that might want to scrub in with us?"

"…Are you serious?" He's gonna let me see the inside of an OR? What's the occasion? Is it my birthday?! "You're gonna let me scrub in on a kidney transplant?!"

"I was… but then I heard that you want off Peds."

"No…. I don't want off Peds… not me. Nope. Uh-uh. I'm fine with Peds." I knew this had to pay off eventually. I wasn't being tortured by people that hate me for no reason. I KNEW this had to pay off. "Anything you need me to get before the surgery? Labs? Pre-Op screenings? Anything?"

"Hold your horses, Princess." He hooks a bag of fluid into her IV. "You will scrub in, you will stand back and observe and I might let you hold a retractor. Don't get too excited…you're still—"

"A nothing little intern, I got it." I finish his sentence, roll my eyes and tuck my hair behind my ears. "Can you please just stop calling me Princess? I don't like it." I ask him nicely for the millionth time. At this point, I'd be less insulted if he started calling me "hairball" like Dr. Yang calls me. I just don't like the whole concept of him thinking I'm a princess when I'm really not. I hate that. I sigh and lean against the little girl's bed while I watch him take care of her IV and her monitors. "Why aren't her parents already here? Shouldn't they be here?" _She probably has deadbeat ass parents as well. _

"They have to work, you know…" He starts writing something down on a paper chart. He keeps glancing up at the monitors and writing.

"Yeah, but shouldn't at least one of them be here? She's four years old in kidney failure with needles all in her body and she's probably scared to death… I thought for sure that somebody would at least sit here with her…." _I don't think work is a valid excuse. I don't want to have children, but if I did have them and my poor, sweet, innocent, four year old baby girl was in the hospital, I wouldn't leave her side. She's gonna need her mommy. _"Kids this small need their mommies…"

"Not everybody's life is that easy, Princess. It's not fair to judge."

"I SAID STOP CALLING ME PRINCESS." _Just calm down. He's an idiot…he's not worth screaming at. _I look over at the little girl to make sure I didn't wake her up with my little outburst. She's still sleeping peacefully. "…Stop calling me that and stop assuming that my life is perfect because you see a damn watch on my wrist. You don't know shit about me." _Shut your mouth, Jo. Shut your mouth. You're gonna get yourself fired. _"God… I don't know why you keep requesting me to be on your damn service if all you're gonna do is insult me. I'd rather…" I stop myself. "Just stop it…please. And I'm not judging the little girl's parents I just…"

He looks at me with wide, honest eyes. For the first time since I've met him, I feel like he's listening to what I have to say. I don't feel like he's prejudging me or not listening. I feel like he's actually hearing me out. I swallow a lump in my throat, hold back my tears and keep going. "I just didn't understand why her parents—or ANY parents for that matter would just leave her here… your parents can't just leave you. It does things to you…"

"It's not for you to understand though, Wilson. If you can't handle this—"

"I can handle it, Dr. Karev… I'm just wondering. How someone could just leave their child. I don't know…" I take a step away from the bed. "Maybe I'm wrong for just assuming and I'm sorry for that… but I don't know, my own mother left ME at a fire station when I was a baby and I know what that's like… I don't think any child should have to go through that. I know what that's like… I bounced from foster home to foster home to foster home until I got sick of it and even then, I lived in my CAR. I'm sorry that you got the wrong impression of me, but I'm NOT a prissy princess. I got into good colleges because I worked my ASS off and this watch?" I take my hand out of my pocket and hold my wrist up. "This is the nicest thing I own… and it was gift from the ONLY person that ever gave a shit about me…the ONLY person that was ever at any of my graduations…and her son works for the company that makes them, so… I don't know…" _Did you really just tell your asshole boss your whole life story? _"Just don't call me princess. Call me hairball, call me anything else…just not that."

"…I'm sorry." He holds out his hand to me. "…Why don't we start over, Dr. Wilson? I'm Alex… Dr. Karev."

I shake his hand. "…Josephine Wilson…but you can call me Jo."


	7. Chapter 7

"What exactly are we looking for again?" She moves her leg to the side to take the weight off it and leans forward. "I thought you said she took really well to the transplant." I can tell that she's tired because her voice is jagged and raspy and her eyes are heavy. I've spent the entire day with her and I must say that she's a lot tougher than I gave her credit for. I didn't think she'd be able to scrub in on the transplant surgery because I gave her a shit-ton of post-op notes to finish. She managed to finish all of them and still make it in time enough to scrub in with me. Plus, she hasn't complained at all about the work that Robbins and I have been throwing and throwing at her. She's tough.

"She did… but I'm looking for any signs of rejection. Kids are way more resilient than adults but the chance of rejection in children is way higher. She's gonna need to be monitored for an hour straight and periodically overnight." If I'm being honest, I have to say that I do think of her differently than I did when this day first started. I guess it's my fault for prejudging her because the more I actually sat and got to know her, the more I can see that she's really not bitchy. She's actually funny and she has a really chill personality. "If you wanna run down to the cafeteria and see if they still have coffee out, you can." I flip through Kelsey's chart to compare her old stats with her new ones. "It's only 7:30…they might still have the coffee carts out."

"I'm fine… I don't really like coffee that much." She leans forward again but grabs Kelsey's foot this time. She brushes her thumb over the little bumps that form her toes and stares into the tiny bed with adoration in her eyes. "…Why do you suppose little kids get the short ends of the sticks sometimes?" She talks at me instead of to me because her attention is completely focused on the four year old that's still laying asleep waiting for her anesthesia to wear off. I think Jo's gonna be fairly easy to teach. She's not like I was when I was an intern. She already has incredible bedside manner so that's one less thing I have to teach her. "It's like… when you see adults in kidney failure or liver failure or whatever, they usually deserve it because nine times outta ten, they probably drank themselves or smoked themselves into their fate. But with babies…they haven't even been here long enough to deserve anything."

"Sometimes life's just crappy I guess." I take my eyes off the chart for a split second to watch what she's doing. She's compassionately rubbing the little girl's hand now. I work in rooms with kids and their parents all day and I know the kind of touch that she's giving to the little girl, so I wonder… "…You got kids, Wilson?"

"Me?" She blows air out of her closed lips like you see people spit out a mouthful of their beverage in movies. "Hell no…" She stops rubbing Kelsey's hand for a second and looks up at me. "…I don't want kids. I'm not the mothering type, you know? If somebody ever gave me kids they made a huge mistake because I'm NOT a mother." I raise my eyebrow at her and smirk. She smiles back at me. "I'm a doctor…when will I ever have time to feed a kid or take care of it? I don't even realize when _I've _gone a day without eating or sleeping, can you imagine me taking care of a child? I'd be the worst mother ever or something like that."

"Geez, chill out killer." I nudge her in the arm with my elbow. "You looked pretty natural holding Kelsey's hand, so I was just wondering." I sit back down in the chair next to her so we can both continue monitoring our patient. "You're what… 27, 28?" She nods her head, right back into the memorization-with-the-kid state she was in a second ago. "You might change your mind. I'm a completely different person than I was when I was your age. I used to want to be a plastic surgeon."

"Plastics?" 

"Yep…told you I used to be totally different." I look at the little girl in the bed as well. "Never used to want to get married, never used to want to have a family, never used to want to own my own place… you'll change more than you're willing to admit. Just give it time. There's no way you're making it out of this program the same person you were as when you came in."

"Look at you now." She looks over at me with a half-smile on her face. "You're married, aren't you? To the blonde that works in Dermatology? And seeing the way you are with the kids that come in here, I assume you want babies with your wife. And you don't exactly strike me as the type that lives with your parents still, so I'm guessing you have your own house… am I close?"

"Yeah, you're pretty close." I don't even think she's hot anymore. That went away a couple hours ago. She's actually beautiful. Her newfound personality adds to that a whole lot but I can't even think about sleeping with her anymore. I think being her friend is actually helping. Remind me to thank Cristina. Still and yet though, I'm completely wonderstruck by her facial features. Her face is so childlike but adult at the same time…she's unlike anyone I've ever seen before. "Not married yet though. We're looking at October 3rd for the wedding."

"Fall wedding…that's cute." She rests her chin on the bars of the patient bed and sighs. "You guys have colors and songs and cakes and decorations picked out yet?"

"We're thinking multicolored would be nice and we're cake testing sometime this week."

"Good luck. Weddings are stressful." She tucks a piece of her chestnut brown hair behind her ear. "That's why I'm glad that I never want to get married…that's just way too much to worry about."

"Geez Jo… is there anything you do want to do? You don't want to be a mother, you don't want to get married… Anything that you DO want to do with your life?"

"…I wanna be a surgeon." She shrugs her shoulders.

"Do you have a boyfriend?" I ask, but there's good reason why I'm asking. I'm not asking just because I want to be nosy and learn more about her. Okay, I do want to know if she's seeing anyone, but I've just been wondering her view on relationships if she never wants to get married and never wants to have kids. So with that, I'll clarify. "Because when you're in a relationship, you gotta think of it this way… Either you're gonna break up with that person or you're gonna be with them for the rest of your life. You can't just stay boyfriend and girlfriend for the rest of your life."

"Why not?" She turns her head to me again. "But no… I don't have a boyfriend." I watch her cheek poke out where she put her tongue in it at. "…I don't know…define boyfriend. I'm… I'm not single but I'm not taken either. I'm… talking to someone…going on a date with someone after work tonight, actually." She licks her lips. "It's not really a date, it's more like a drink…over at Joe's."

"Guy from OB?"

"How'd you know?"

"You two spent the day yesterday looking at each other with big goo-goo eyes." I look down at my watch. Wow… we've been talking for half an hour already… "It's eight o'clock." I stretch out my arms and change the conversation because I really don't want to hear about her and the idiot from OB. I don't care to hear about her relationship status anymore. "Let's go round one more time and I'll let you get outta here for the night." I stand up and stretch out some more.

"I don't get off until nine." She stands up too. I notice that she has a piece of dark blue fuzz on the seat of her scrub pants but I won't tell her because she'd totally know that I was looking at her ass. I kind of wish that the fuzz was in her hair so then I could have an excuse to touch her without looking like a jerk that just wanted to touch her ass. "Rounds don't take an hour."

It's not even that I want to grab her ass or anything like that. I just want to touch her because she doesn't seem real. Talking to her is like talking to the female version of myself. From the shitty upbringing to the initially wanting to stay single and not have children. She's like talking to me and I'm having a hard time believing that she's real. I need a reason to touch her to show my mind that this girl is not a figment of my imagination.

"I know you don't get off until nine, Wilson." I hold the door to the patient's room open for her. "Am I not allowed to do something nice and let you off early for your date?"

"What did you, get laid?" She walks beside me with her hands in her pockets. "You're never this nice to me."

"…Something like that." I crack a smile and laugh.

"Dr. Karev?" She stops walking dead in her tracks and looks at the ground like she's nervous.

"Alex…" I mutter.

"Oh. Well… Alex?" She looks up and looks me in my eyes. She bites her lip and looks around. "…Can I be on your service on Monday? I… I kinda like Peds...and you're a really good teacher." She rocks back and forth on her feet and smiles a playful smile. "Once you get past the douchebaggery and stuff, I mean."

"Just for that, no. You can't be on Peds on Monday. You can't go around calling me a douchebag…even if I am a douchebag." I stick my tongue out at her to show her that I'm just being facetious.

"Oh, WHATEVER." She rolls her eyes. "Seriously though… I like Peds."

"I'll see what I can do about Monday. You really should spend time on other services though."

"I know…"

**Jo's Point of View.**

"I'll be home later, Steph. I'm running over to Joe's with Jason for a drink." I shove my legs into the pair of jeans I stowed away in my locker and zip them up. "Can you just leave the door unlocked? I don't think I'll be out late because he's not off tomorrow…he works early." I grab her deodorant out of her locker and roll it underneath my armpits. "Helloooo…. Stephanie? Are you hearing me?"

"I heard you." She's lying down on the benches with her hands underneath her glasses and over her eyes. "…Do you have any idea the kind of day I've had?" She sounds like she's been put through the ringer. "I had to stand there and watch while Dr. Bailey ran a man's bowel…for three…freaking…hours. My feet are screaming at me."

"Oooh." I grab my long sleeved purple t-shirt and pop it over my head, maneuvering my arms in a way that won't allow me to get deodorant marks on the ends of the shirt. "I'm sorry for that. But I had an amazing day. I was so wrong about Alex. Steph, he's amazing." I throw my boots down and shove my feet into them. "He's so good with the children and he's literally so sweet. And he's FUNNY. I was so wrong about him…I almost feel bad for trash-talking him the way I did before."

"Dr. Bailey really is a freakin' Nazi. She acted the way Medusa would act…only worse." She sits up on the bench and adjusts her glasses back to normal. "Jo, I was contemplating suicide by lunchtime. I wanna go back to Cardio with Yang so bad that I'd slit my wrists and sacrifice the blood to the devil."

"He told a little girl that he put magic in her IV bag to make her feel better, Steph. He told her that the red stuff coming out of her arm was Tinkerbell's tears because she was weirded out by the idea of blood. He's so good with children and he's so sweet. The way he talks about his wife…he was gushing to me about the wedding and he sounded so excited and it was so cute. He thinks it's cool to talk to kids about… fairy dust and unicorn poop. My heart melted today."

"I didn't even know one man had that much bowel in his body. THERE WAS SO MUCH BOWEL."

I sigh when I realize that she's really not listening to me. I'm so serious though. I was so very wrong about Alex. He's awesome. I really just wanna be on Peds for the rest of my life. I know interns and residents don't specialize right away but I swear I think I just chose my specialty. I want to stay on Peds and I want to continue learning from him. He's the most amazing teacher. He's patient, kind and so easygoing with the kids. He's really not that big of an asshole. He's actually a big ass softie. He's gonna make such a good daddy and his wife is actually lucky. I used to think that she was sick in the head to deal with a coldhearted bastard like him but he's actually great. I'm so surprised.

"I'll see you at home, Steph."

**X X X**

"But you basically look at vaginas all day." I grab the tiny black straw that's in my drink and stir it, listening to the ice cubes clank off the sides of the glass. I wonder if he noticed that I've only taken a sip of my drink. It's not that I'm not hungry or thirsty or whatever and I don't want to be here. It's just that I'm extremely tired and like I said before, I don't like drinking hardcore around people that I don't know because alcohol makes me really loopy. The martini that he bought me tastes really good but I'm pacing myself with it so I don't get super drunk. "Do you ever get any smelly ones?"

"…What kind of question is that?" He turns his bottle of beer up to his lips and drinks it. "Most of—not all of—but most of my patients know how to bathe properly before they see me. So…I can't say that I'm around gross smelly ones all day. But there are some girls that are just… not clean." He puts his beer bottle down and folds his hands atop of the table. "And there's more to it than just looking at vaginas all day, thank you very much."

"Oh I forgot that you also give breast exams…those are crucial." I take a sparing sip of my drink and look across the table at him. I've smiled more today than I've smiled in a very long time. Today has just been an awesome day all around. "Sorry but I don't think it takes much effort to squeeze a girl's boob and catch a baby when it just falls out of her."

"It also doesn't take any effort to walk around with your lips glued to real surgeons' asses all day girl." He winks at me and takes one more sip of his beer.

"I have you know I held a retractor today… I'm moving up on the totem pole." I drum my fingers along on the wood of the table. "How does one choose The Vagina Squad as a specialty? Did you just go into it for the sake of staring at vaginas all day or did you really decide that you want to help women?"

"…Little bit of both." He admits. "Why do you insist on busting my balls all the time? I hope you know that when you're my girl, this has gotta stop. I can't have a girl that busts my balls all the time…no matter how beautiful she is."

"…Oh, _when _I'm your girl? I guess you're not one for courtship…" I look down at the table. _He called me beautiful… and he basically just admitted that he wants me to be his girlfriend. ALRIGHT! This day can't get any better than this. I got to get inside the OR today, I held a retractor, I got blood on my hands and now I have a boyfriend? _"But thank you…" I move a piece of my bangs out of my face. "You're not so bad looking yourself. And IF I'm ever your girlfriend…I guess I'll consider easing up on you, vagina boy."

"Did I just get shot down?" He's looking at me like I'm literally the prettiest thing he's ever seen in his life. I've had enough boys looking at me in my lifetime and it's not really that hard for me to tell when they're smitten by me. The look in his eyes says it all…he's in love with me—or the way I look. I would totally say yes if he asked me to be his girlfriend tonight but I really just don't think that he should've fallen this hard for me already. I've only known the guy for three days and this is only our first date.

"Little bit." I'll let him down easy because I don't want to burn any bridges with him. I really like this guy and I can really see myself being his girlfriend but I need a little bit longer with him before I fall for him like I can tell he's fallen for me. "…Not saying that you'll stay shot down, though."

"…I wanna know you, Jo." He eases his hand across the table and touches my hand. Like they always do whenever I'm confused, my eyes squint and my eyebrows furrow. What does he mean by that? He already knows me… and if he's admitting that he doesn't really know me, that's just yet another reason why I don't think that he should be this crazy over me. "I want to know everything about you… Everything that nobody else knows about you? I want to know… because somehow, I think you're more than just a beautiful face."

I stare down at the table. My stomach is in knots. It's been so long since a guy has given me butterflies like this. "…Shut up…" _I'm really not even that pretty. He's gotta stop calling me beautiful. He's making me blush. _"…You wouldn't think I was pretty if I was just some random girl in the bar."

"You're wrong." Real smoothly, he slides his hand inside mine and squeezes it. "If you were out there with them…" He motions with his head to the crowd of girls that are dancing on the small dancefloor towards the back of the bar. "If you were out there with them and I walked in here and saw you out there in those jeans and that tight shirt… I'd sit here and stare and wait until I came up with something special and it was the right time to make my move. And right when you were ready to slip out that door for the night, I'd make my way to that dancefloor and I'd make you mine…please believe that. I'd have to get me some of you… there wouldn't be an option."

"…And if that's any indication of how you felt when you first saw me then—"

He quickly interrupts me. "When I first saw you walk onto my floor with Robbins, I was thinking 'Lord have mercy'."

"You're sweet." I look over at the clock that's hanging on the wall above the bartenders. "…It's getting really late. We should probably head home for the night. Well… I should head home before Stephanie goes to bed for the night because I don't really want her to have to leave the door unlocked while she's in the house sleeping, so…" I reach into my purse and scrounge up three bucks to leave a tip for the cocktail waitress. I can't really afford to leave her this money but I refuse to let Jason pay for everything. "Um… we should do this again… like tomorrow night when you get off work. I'm off tomorrow, so whatever time is good…"

"Meet me here tomorrow at eight." He stands up from his side of the table. "Text me when you get home to let me know you got there okay…. with your crappy car and all, the last thing I need is for you to be broken down on the side of the road."

That makes me laugh. "I totally will." I push the straps of my purse up on my shoulder. "So…tomorrow at eight. I'll see you then?"

"See you." He nods his head. I start to walk off towards the door. I'll feel bad if I make Steph wait up for me. I know that she had a shitty day at work today and she probably just wants to go to bed and I'd feel horrible if I made her go to sleep with the door unlocked. Even though we live on the quiet side of Seattle, anything can happen with an unlocked door. "Oh and wait a second…" Jason calls back to me so I stop walking and backpedal towards him. "About earlier… yes or no?" He asks. I hesitate for a minute because I'm not sure what he's talking about. "About you being my girl… yes or no?"

"…Yeah, I guess that'd be cool." I crack a smile.

"And you're not gonna leave me without a hug or a kiss goodnight, are you?" He gives me that devilish grin. I jokingly roll my eyes and take one more step back towards him. Again, I hesitate for a second but this time it's because I'm unsure of this. I like him but I really think this is all happening too fast. I feel like I'm in a high school relationship with how fast this is all going. But because we a_re _in fact….boyfriend and girlfriend, I tilt my head to the side so we don't bump noses, close my eyes and put my lips against his. No tongue….just a kiss.

"Goodnight." I whisper to him after we pull away from each other.

**Alex's Point of View.**

"If you don't wanna get married, all you have to do is say it! I'm so sick of having this conversation with you, Alex! Then when I call you out on it you act like there's nothing wrong! It's always something with you! First you didn't wanna get married last month because it was my birthday month, then you didn't want to get married THIS month because it's so humid and rainy in July, so to appease you, I pushed it all the way until fucking OCTOBER and you're STILL complaining! I'm so tired of trying to make this work with you!"

I finish emptying the dishwasher so she can put the dirty dishes from dinner tonight inside them. "Cut me some friggin' slack here, Iz! I never said I didn't want to get married I just suggested that MAYBE we should push it back to the beginning of November because I DON'T THINK that we're ready! We still have so much shit to do to get ready and I don't think three months is enough time for everything that you're trying to do!"

"Right, because it's ALL my fault. It's my fault for wanting my wedding to be nice. It's my fault for wanting to get married the RIGHT way. SCREW THE FACT THAT I TOLD YOU WE COULD GO DOWN TO CITY HALL LIKE YOU WANTED!"

"Are you done putting words in my mouth?! Because right now, you're making it seem like THE ONLY REASON we've been waiting was because of my so –called "uncertainty." We're gonna nix the fact that we put it off last month because it was your birthday month AND because your best friend or lover or whatever George was to you DIED. We're just gonna act like you were never in love with George and you were never devastated that he died…aren't we? What kind of MAN would I have been if I let you marry me when your old flame just DIED?"

"It always comes back to George…always." She slams a dirty plate down on the counter and stomps over to the fridge. "Just admit it Alex… Admit it that you were always jealous of the relationship I had with him."

"…Jealous? No, Iz…let's rewind and remember that I PROPOSED TO YOU LIKE AN IDIOT and you told me NO because of HIM. And now all of a sudden since he died, you're all gung-ho and all for marrying me? How do I know this is what you really want? How do I know that you're not marrying me just because he's not here?"

"So it's a trust issue now? You don't trust that I love you?"

"How could I when you never show it?"

"I NEVER SHOW IT?! YOU'RE THE ONE THAT TREATS ME BAD!"

"….Go to hell, Iz. Really, go to hell." I kick the refrigerator door shut and walk towards the exit of the kitchen. "I've done nothing but treat you good. I stayed through it all and you have the nerve to say I treat you bad? You don't appreciate ANYTHING these days. I did everything for you and you still pulled that shit when George died and you left me…remember that? You went back to Chehalis and I didn't hear from you for three weeks. Then you just showed back up here and said 'sorry'. No explanation, no reason why…just 'sorry.' You don't act like you love me, Iz… so excuse me if I'm a little leery about getting married so soon. I don't think I can deal with losing you anymore. You got sick and I lost you two different times…then you got better and you left me and I lost you AGAIN. I can't lose you again…"

"…Goodnight Alex."

**Jo's Point of View.**

"Well how was your date? Anything to report?" Steph asks. She's sitting on my butt while she's playing with my hair—literally. I'm lying on my stomach on her bed watching Saw II and she's sitting on my butt playing with my hair. I think she's putting some kind of braid into it but I'm not sure. I know that she better not pull it real tight because I HATE when my hair gets pulled. I seriously might square up and fight you if you pull my hair all hard and shit. I get so mad when someone pulls my hair. "And are you sleeping in here with me?" She asks that because the last time we stayed up late when we were off the next day, we watched The Blair Witch Project and the both of us were too scared shitless to sleep alone. Saw isn't as bad as The Blair Witch Project but still.

"Yeah, I guess I'll sleep in here." I mumble and grab the remote. I'm getting bored with this movie. "And it was okay. He moved way too fast but I guess maybe I'm just looking too much into it. I was expecting this to just be a simple date and whatever but he ended up asking me to be his girlfriend and we kissed, which I thought that was a little much for a first date but maybe not… I dunno. It was good. He's really nice so that's a plus." I turn on MTV because Jackass 2.0 is on.

"I don't think kissing is too much for a first date." She lets my hair go and runs her fingers through it. I could fall asleep to her playing with my hair. "At least you didn't screw him. You could've gone back to his place and slept with him on the first date and then I would've been forced to slut-shame you….because that's a slut move."

"Stephanie." I turn my head as much as I can to look at her. "If I had drunk all of my drink, I think I might've. I was so concerned with that because I KNOW if I was drunk with him I would've had sex with that man tonight and I would've been so ashamed of myself. I get so horny when I'm drunk and I'm already horny every single day as it is… tonight had so much potential to be HORRIBLE for me."

"I'm telling you…we're gonna get you a vibrator." She grabs a big chunk of my hair and tugs it up into a bun. "Why are you not getting laid? What's your problem? Do you have a phobia of penises or something?"

"DEFINITELY NOT." I put my head down and laugh so hard into her quilt that I slobber and drool a little bit. "I haven't had sex since…" I close my eyes so I can think. "What is it, it's July isn't it?" I open my eyes back up. "I haven't had sex since April…and that was the biggest mistake of my life but it happened and…whatever. It was good and I haven't had sex since April."

"Why was it such a mistake?"

"Because it was with my microbiology professor."

"JO!"

"I knooooow…." My cheeks flush bright red just thinking about it. "But he was hot and he was hitting on me for the entire semester. And I had just gotten word that they were gonna let me into the program here so I already knew I was moving to Seattle so I was just like fuck it… it was in his car and it was so uncomfortable but it was so good Steph…." I bite my lip. "He kept hinting at it. He would look at me when I was in his lab for the day doing my bio rotation and I wasn't stupid, Steph… I could see the bulge in his pants. And he was so hot…"

"So you like older guys?"

"That's all I mess with. I don't like young guys… they just can't do anything for me. They gotta be at least a year older..." I shrug my shoulders. "I've never done anything with guys that were younger than me so I don't know…"

"See, I'm the same way." She gets off me and lies down right beside me. "I said sex last month with my college boyfriend and he's two years older than me so I kind of get what you mean by that."

"You never told me you had a boyfriend…."

"I don't. We're not boyfriend and girlfriend. We broke up last year but we still have sex. I'm the kind of girl that likes to stick with one boy so until I find someone here in Seattle to be in a committed relationship with, I'm going to be screwing him. That's just how I am. I'm 28 years old and I only have four bodies. The guy I lost my virginity to, my first serious boyfriend, my college boyfriend and this one guy that was in my biochem class. He was sexy and he had a big…yeah, so I just… yanno."

"You make it sound like you lost yours when you were young." I roll over onto my back and stare up at the ceiling. Don't get me wrong, I love sex just as much as the next person…but I'm not exactly too proud of all of my sexual encounters. The one with my professor is one that I'd like to take back. I don't know, I've made a whole lot of mistakes in my life…and I sleep with inappropriate men a whole lot. Sometimes I let my hormones get the best of me and I have sex with people and immediately I regret it. "How old _were _you when you lost your virginity?"

"Fifteen." She puts her head on my shoulder and looks up at the ceiling with me. "He was a junior and he took me to prom…because at my school, freshmen and sophomores couldn't go to prom unless a junior or senior took them…so he took me to prom and we went to the after prom party at this senior's house and we had sex in the bathroom. It sucked, but everybody's first time sucks, right?"

"Yeah."

"How many bodies do you have, Jo?"

"Too many." I sigh, ashamed to even admit how many I have as opposed to her four. It's only a couple more than hers but I'm still ashamed of every last one of them except for my boyfriend I had back when I went to Princeton. I still think he should be the ONLY person I've ever had sex with. "I have six."

"That's not bad… why'd you say it like it's bad? You're 28…six bodies is not bad for 28."

"Yeah, but I regret most of them….and a few of them should've never happened. Like Professor Gaines? That had no business happening. I had no business sleeping with a 36 year old married man when I was 27…. That shouldn't have happened. I cried so hard after I did that…you don't understand, Steph. I was so upset with myself and… I don't know, I was kinda stupid about it, too. Because I thought I really meant something to him but nope. He fucked me in the backseat of his car then rode me back to my dorm because he had to go pick up his wife from work. I got back to my dorm and cried myself to sleep."

"…That's kind of excusable, though. In my psychology class, we went over something about how girls—and boys, but mostly girls—that grow up not feeling loved tend to look for love in the wrong ways… so maybe that's what that is."

"Or maybe I'm just a stupid slut that needs to learn to keep her legs closed. I'm so embarrassed that I had sex with a married man… and please don't ever repeat this. Everything that's said here, never repeat… please. Like… I'm really trusting you. I don't open up to everybody…"

"You don't have to tell me not to tell anyone, Jo. I'll never say anything about your personal life. Best friends don't do that." She pats my cheek with her hand. "It's not like you're some big whore. You're 28 with six bodies…that's good. And I'm not judging you…. unless you say some shit about liking to be tied to the bed and whipped… you seem like you'd be into that kinky shit." She busts out into gut-busting laughter.

I laugh right along with her. "…I don't mind if my arms are tied down or if my legs are tied down." I keep laughing. "….Just don't tie both my arms and my legs down so I can't move. That's not cool…that brings back bad memories…"

"…What?" She stops laughing just as quickly as she started. _Shit…she caught that._ I didn't mean to say that. That seriously slipped out. But maybe it won't hurt… It's been kept in for twelve years and I've never breathed a word to anyone. _How much do I trust Steph? _"Did you just…" Her voice is really soft, like she's dancing around what I just said. "You got raped?"

"…Ehh…. Once or twice." I shrug and make it into a joke. It's not a joke…it's really not. But I think it's easier if I make a joke about it. "…Don't tell anybody." I whisper that last part.

"Oh my god…" She mouths silently but I heard it since she's directly in my ear. "Did you tell anyone? I…" She sits up and looks at me. I don't even look her in her eye. I don't want her to pity me because I DON'T need her to pity me. It happened so long ago and I'm so over it. It's not that big of a deal anymore. "I'm sorry…you don't have to talk about it…but… I just… I didn't know, Jo…I'm so sorry." I shrug my shoulders again and hold my hands up to the overhead light that's on inside the room. I open and close my fingers and look at how long my nails have gotten. I feel like I might cry or throw up. "Is the guy in jail?" She clamps her hand over her mouth. "Sorry again…we don't have to talk about it..."

I shake my head. At least I don't think he's in jail. I'm not sure if he actually made a habit out of raping little girls is what I mean. I'm positive that he didn't go to jail for what he did to me because aside from me and him, Stephanie is the only person that even knows. But who knows if he did it to another girl? Maybe he got jail time for that one. I put my hands down away from the light and very discreetly, I brush away a tear that trickled out of my eye. Steph's still looking at me. …Maybe it won't hurt to talk about it. "…People don't just get kicked out of foster homes for no reason, Steph… there gotta be a reason."

"…And that was the reason?"

"…One of the reasons. Mainly the reason I started living in my car." I sit up and run my hand through my hair. I need a haircut so badly. "I mean I didn't really get kicked out of that one but…" I lick my lips. _Let me just make this quick. _"I got kicked out of like ten different foster homes. I got kicked out of one because I beat the shit out of the son because he put glue in my hair… and then it was difficult to place me because I was considered a violent kid. But anyway… that one was my eleventh and it was the best one I'd ever been in. The um… the wife—my foster mother, she really liked me. She would like…buy me clothes and take me to get my nails done and stuff…she taught me how to drive and she gave me the car. Her husband liked me too…but he liked me WAY too much…"

Since I'm wearing shorts, I can see one of the scars that got put on my leg from the one kid I beat the crap out of for putting glue in my hair. He tried to fight back but it just ended up with him having to go to the hospital. "She was at work one day and it was summertime so I wasn't in school and he started talking to me and the conversation escalated to him asking me if I was virgin and I told him I was…because I was. I was sixteen but I hadn't had sex yet. He was huge, too. A real big, burly, lumberjack looking guy…so I couldn't get him off but I did scream the entire time." I swallow a lump in my throat. "Sucky way to lose your virginity, I think." I shrug. "But I'm fine now…I just don't like to be grabbed in certain ways, you know? It does things to me…"

"…I'm so sorry." She gives me the tightest hug I've ever had in my life. "But you're like… you're so happy and cheery and… I mean… you don't seem like…"

"What's there to be sad about? If I mope around about something that happened to me when I was sixteen, what would the point be? Moping around and being sad about it isn't gonna make him un-rape me and it's definitely not gonna get my virginity back…that's exactly why I ran away. I wasn't just gonna let him do it again so I ran away and I started living in my car." I shrug my shoulders again. "Oh well… shit happens and I can't change it. I know for damn sure that I'm not getting raped again…but it happened once and that's that."

"I love you, Jo…okay? You're my best freaking friend and if you ever need somebody to talk to about any of that shit…I got you. I'm right here, always. Got that?"

"I love you too Steph." I look at the clock on the cablebox. "It's late, now let's go to bed."


	8. Chapter 8

"Iz… Iz, wake up." I place my hands on the small of her back and shake her very softly. I'm not still angry about our fight last night but she probably is. Iz takes longer to get over things than I do. I bend my knees and lean down to kiss her cheek. I move a couple pieces of her soft blonde locks away from her ear and whisper in it. "Wake up… I made food." Even if I was still mad at her, I couldn't stay mad at her if I tried. She has to take her medicine before we go to work for the day and if she takes her pills on an empty stomach she'll end up being sick for the rest of the day. I don't mind taking care of Iz. I love her to death and I still don't want to lose her so even though we fought, I'll still take care of her. "Come on Iz… your food's gonna get cold."

"Okay… I'm awake." She peels her head off her pillow and yawns. She sits up, fixes her hair and looks at me. "I'm going into work for a half day." She doesn't even look at me. She gets out of the bed and scurries around the room to find her bathrobe. And that's how I know she's still reeling from the argument last night. She won't even look at me and she's being short with me as well. Whatever, I don't care if she's mad at me as long as she eats and takes her medicine. "And when I leave work today, I'm going back to Chehalis for a couple days."

I roll my eyes at her. "Of course you are." I mumble, taking a step out of the room to go take a shower and get dressed for work. Almost every time we get into an argument or end up fighting, she leaves and goes back to Chehalis. She claims it's because she needs a "break" from me but I don't even know if I buy that anymore. That's why I'm so reluctant and hesitant to even argue with her half of the time because I don't want her to go. When she goes back home, she stays there for a while. She says that it'll only be for two days but I bet she'll be there longer.

"I need a break from you." She muses and I mouth right along to every word she's saying because the speech is always, always, always the same no matter how severe the argument. "If we're going to make this work Alex, we need to realize when we need time apart when we're sick of each other so that we appreciate one another when we're together. And right now, I'm just not sure if I can handle you."

"Absence makes _your _heart grow fonder, Izzie. Not mine." I press my fingers into the corners of my eyes and rub the bridge of my nose. See, this is why I'm so torn up about whether or not I should marry her. To everyone, we fake and act like our relationship is perfect but in reality, I think I'm drowning. It's so stressful to love someone as much as I love her but be so sick of her and her shit all at the same time. Sometimes I think she's just getting back at me for how I treated her in the beginning. Granted, we were nothing more than boyfriend and girlfriend back then, but still. I did cheat on her once. I did have a bunch of girls in my corner too. But that all changed as soon as I got serious about her. I haven't cheated on her since and I've been 100% committed to her. I don't deserve payback for something that happened back when we were young.

"Whatever. I don't want to argue with you anymore so please just shut your mouth and I'll shut mine." She secures her robe around her body and walks right out the door, right past me. "I never made you stay, Alex. I never made you stay." She stops walking and looks directly at me. "And I thank you for staying and not giving up on me. That doesn't do anything but make me love you more because you stayed. But I never made you. I never held a gun to your head and made you stay with me and I'm still not twisting your arm to stay. You can leave anytime you want."

"I'm not leaving, Iz. I'm not. There's nothing you can say or do that'll make me leave because despite everything, I love you. You don't give up on someone you love." I run my hands through my hair and sigh. "Just make sure you eat before you take your medicine, alright? And come find me before you leave for Chehalis."

"Alright then. I'll be back on Wednesday."

**X X X**

Because I didn't eat at home, I'm stuck sitting in the residents' lounge eating nasty dry Lucky Charms I stole from the breakfast cart that brings the patients their breakfast. "And she thinks it's okay to just up and leave. I don't get her logic." It's not like I didn't make enough breakfast this morning to eat what I made for Iz, I just wanted to get the hell out of the house as quickly as possible. I pop a little green marshmallow in my mouth and suck on it. "But I don't want to say anything to her about it because you know… I get that she's going through it. I get that ever since the cancer came up she wants to spend more time at home. But come ON. She can't just keep leaving me like this…can she?"

"I'll tell you one thing…" Mere digs her fingers into the plastic bowl that my cereal is in and eats a pink heart-shaped marshmallow. "Sitting here crying to me about it isn't gonna change the fact that she's going to Chehalis. You've gotta stop making so many excuses for her. Okay, she's dealing with cancer and that's really sad but she's also in a relationship…and relationships aren't as half-assed as she's making it. Where are your balls, Alex? Stand up for yourself."

"I'm afraid to." I eat some of the plain parts of the cereal. "Because I know that sticking up for what I believe is right isn't gonna do a damn thing but end up in an argument and every time we argue, she leaves! Nothing makes her happy, Mere. And I've been trying so hard to make sure she's happy and comfortable…what about me, though? She never even asks or attempts to make sure I'm happy. And I know she's not doing it on purpose just to be a bitch because that's NOT Izzie. She's really just oblivious to the fact that I'm drowning here."

"I don't know what to tell you." She takes a handful of my cereal and eats one piece at a time. "If you can't stick up for yourself out of fear that she might leave you…I can't help you. It's a tough situation you're in." When she decides that she's over the whole eat-one-piece-at-a-time thing, she shoves the remaining cereal in the handful she took in her mouth and starts talking with her mouthful. "How….about…." A piece of cereal flies out of her mouth and I tune my nose up. I swat the chewed up, spit-soaked cereal off the table with the back of my hand. She swallows her cereal hard and wipes her mouth off. "How about the sex? Any luck with that?"

"Nope." I slide the empty bowl across the table and lean back in my chair. "It's been two months. It was two months yesterday, to be exact. I'm trying to be understanding with that too, Mere. I'm trying to understand that the medicine she takes right before bed makes her feel nauseous. I'm trying to understand that her sex drive isn't what it used to be….hell, mine isn't even what it used to be either." Just as I finish my sentence, Cristina comes inside the room and sits down without a word right across from me. I just keep talking to Mere though. "…You remember how you made sure that we froze her eggs when she first got sick?" Because she has a mouthful of orange juice, she nods. "We both decided that we wanted to try for a baby the all-natural way before we resort to going all scientific with it. But how are we supposed to have a baby if she won't let me touch her?"

"Oh, you guys are still hoping to have kids someday?" Cristina picks up the empty cereal bowl, looks inside it and tosses it back to the side when she sees that it's empty.

"Well…yeah." I'm not exactly sure if Cristina's the one I should be confiding in about my desire to be a parent someday. Cristina doesn't want kids, she never has wanted kids and she probably will NEVER want kids…and that's not even a secret. "Look at everybody around us. Mere's got a kid, Torres and Robbins have a kid…even Kepner and Avery got one coming. I think it's time. But I don't think it'll ever happen if I keep messing around with Iz."

"So dump her. Leave her at the altar…. Have your mother come into town, shave her eyebrows off, then leave her at the altar. That's the least painful way to do it." She shrugs her shoulders. And that right there is a prime example of why I don't take relationship advice from the great Cristina Yang.

"That's probably the WORST way you could do it." Mere waves her hand at Cristina as if she's a gnat that needs swatted away. "If you're really dead set on being with Izzie though, maybe you should talk to her about how you're feeling. Talk to her about how you don't like it when she leaves and for the love of GOD, Alex…talk to her about the sex issue. If you don't do anything else, make sure you talk to her about the sex. Sex deprivation in males can lead to death."

"…Yeah, I liked you better when you were dark and twisty…before you got married and became domestic." I pinch the bridge of my nose and blow out a huff of air.

Cristina reaches over and grabs ahold of my hand. "If you're still sex deprived by next week, I'm giving you full permission to bang the intern." How did I know that Jo was going to make her way into this conversation somehow? I was kind of hoping that I could get out of this conversation without even mentioning her. "Even though you are the spawn of Satan, I still wouldn't want you to kill over and die all because you weren't getting the cookie."

"Wait, there's an intern?" Mere's positioning in her chair completely changes so that she's in my face to the point where it's impossible to ignore her. "Which one is it? Come on, you told Cristina and not me?! I miss one day of work because my kid is sick and I fall this far behind?! Which one is she? Is she that big blonde one with the long legs?" I just keep my mouth shut. I'm not talking about Jo today…nope. "Oh Alex…you can do so much better than that. She's pretty and all, but come on….you can do better than that."

"No, she's not the one." Cristina speaks up. I glare at her and shake my head. So she's just gonna MAKE me talk about Jo today. "It's the hairy one. I can't for the life of me remember the girl's name, but she's hairy. She's… she's shorter than the blonde one but she has long legs too. She's leggy as hell and she has a bunch of hair…. The brunette one, Mere. You know who I'm talking about… real preppy and annoying…. She's tan…" I can tell by the motions she's making with her hands that she's actually trying to scrounge up Jo's name in her memory. "Winslow…"

"Wilson." I mumble.

"OH!" Mere nods her head in approval. "She's pretty cute. I thought you were into blondes that's why I immediately thought of the two blondies…but she's pretty. But don't cheat on Izzie with her. She's not THAT pretty."

"I'm not gonna cheat on Iz." I toss my pager in my pocket and stand up. "Jo's my friend and Izzie is my fiancé. They're not even on the same playing field. Izzie's on the baseball field and Jo's on the football field. They're not even in the same league." I stretch my arms out and yawn. Not to mention Jo has a boyfriend and even though she and _Izzie _aren't in the same league…Jo's way outta mine. "…I'll see you two later. I'm gonna go round with Robbins."

**X X X **

"Karev, there are no interns today so it's all hands on deck… I need you down in trauma room one STAT." As soon as I get on our floor, Robbins is barking orders at me…which means we're anything but slow today. Put it this way, Robbins hardly ever yells. She's usually one of the coolest, most calm doctors to work with so when she's yelling, I can always tell that she means business. And she's running to the elevator to go downstairs to the ER so that's another indication because once again, Arizona Robbins never runs…especially when she's wearing her Heelys.

I guess we're just nixing rounds for the morning. All the interns are off for the day so it's not like I can just hand my electronic chart to someone like Jo and tell her to finish off rounds while I go tend to the trauma that Robbins is referring to. I slip the electronic chart into the charging station and make my way to the stairs. I'll take the stairs as opposed to the elevator because it sounds like Robbins needs me quickly and it'll take too long if I wait for another elevator to come back up. I hold onto the railing and pace myself as I run down the steps. When I get to the ground floor, I walk quickly over to the first trauma room. Nobody but April and Dr. Hunt is in here. "Kepner, have you seen Robbins? She said we had a trauma in this room, but…"

"We sent her over to room two…this one's booked." Hunt points to the room next door with bloody hands. It looks like he and Kepner are pulling glass out of a man. Sometimes I wish I had gone into trauma as my specialty. Kepner gets to see all the gory stuff. I'd like to pull glass out of a guy's face. I turn around and leave out of the room and go next door.

As soon as I get inside the room, I see what all the commotion was for. There's a little girl lying on the trauma bed with a face so bloody that I can't even tell what race she is if I don't look at her arms and legs. I work in Pediatrics for Christ's sake—so when I say that this little girl has one of the tiniest bodies I've ever seen on a toddler, please believe that I'm surprised. I see a lot of tiny toddler bodies, but this little girl looks like a nine month old baby. "Alex, I need you to get in here and take over compressions for me. She's coded twice and she's gonna code again if you don't take over immediately while I set up the defibrillator."

"What the hell happened?" I stand over on the bedside and replace Arizona's hands with my own. "How old is this little girl?"

"She's two and a half years old." One of the paramedics that's still in the room bagging the little girl tells me. "The guy in the car said that she was just wandering around in the middle of the street. He swerved to avoid hitting her but the tail end of the car still got her." Once Arizona sets up the machine, I move my hands away from the little girl's chest and take over squeezing the bag to relieve the paramedic. "Her BP tanked in the field…she was unconscious upon arrival."

I look down at the little girl's face while I'm bagging her. "It's okay sweet girl…you're gonna be fine when we're done with you…" From what I can make out of her bloodied face, she looks like she's an adorable little girl. She has chubby cheeks and hair that curls in little ringlets at the ends. "Where the hell are her parents? Were they NOT there at the scene?"

"No parents when we got there… but neighbors say she was being fostered in the house across the street from the sight of the accident. They didn't give a last name but they said something about her first name being Brynn."

"Of course." I mumble, thinking of what Jo said yesterday about little kids getting the short ends of the sticks. Now that I think about it, I think she had a good point. How could this little girl have possibly deserved to be hit by a car all because her foster parents weren't paying attention or didn't give a damn about her? Speaking of Jo… I kind of wish she was here. It'd be nice to see how she feels about this little girl… knowing that she's been in foster homes. Well the good thing is that it doesn't seem like this poor little girl is going anywhere and Jo comes back to work tomorrow.

**Jo's Point of View.**

"Yeah, starting tomorrow I work every other day instead of two on, two off." I'm not very hungry because Steph and I ate an entire bag of frozen chicken nuggets and tater tots before I came here with him, but he ordered fried mozzarella cheese sticks and offered me some and I don't want to be rude. So I take the smallest one lying in the basket and dip it inside the cup of marinara sauce. "And I think they're giving us pagers tomorrow so I can be paged to come in during the night." I take a small, mannerly bite of the cheese stick and chew with my lips together. I'm just a little bit uncomfortable. Unlike yesterday, he's not sitting across from me. He's sitting right beside me and I'm a little bit claustrophobic but I won't tell him to move.

"You've been working in Pediatrics a whole lot… you considering that as a specialty?" His arm is around me as well. I don't even think I'd be feeling as nervous as I'm feeling right now if he let me sit on the end. It's just that I'm sitting on the inside of the booth we're at and he's blocking me in. What if I need to run somewhere because something happened? He's blocking me in. "You must be considering it as a specialty because nobody willingly spends that much time with Karev."

"…He's not that bad." I shiver a little bit because A, I'm freezing since I only wore a tank top and they clearly have the air on in here; and B, his fingers are rubbing my bare shoulder blade and that's giving me the chills. It's unusually sunny and humid outside today for Seattle so I took full advantage of the weather and put on a white, see-through lace tank top and a pair of dark blue jeans with white sandals to match. "Once you get past the fact that he's rude when you first meet him…he's actually a lot of fun. He's been nice to me lately."

"It's because he thinks you're hot."

"…No he doesn't." I turn my head and look at him with my eyes squinted. "Alex doesn't even… he doesn't think I'm hot. He's getting married and he's happily in love with his fiancé. Plus, he knows that I have a boyfriend. He really doesn't think I'm hot, he's just my friend. We talk about a lot of stuff."

"If that makes you feel better, then yeah…we'll go with that." He chuckles in that sarcastic way…like he thinks I'm naïve. I wrinkle my eyebrows. He's kind of pissing me off. "Everybody knows that before he decided to settle down with the blonde chick, he was notorious for dating and sleeping with everybody. I'm just saying…don't be surprised if you find out down along the line that the whole 'friends' thing was just a ploy to get in your pants."

"…Enough about Alex." I scoot my glass of water over towards the edge and take a sip of it. He's starting to make me angry with all the negative things he's saying about Alex. It's like he's trying to change my opinion of him based on the things that I didn't know about his past…but I'm not gonna do that. I've never been the kind of person to judge people based off their past mistakes because I'd hate it if somebody did that to me. And I'm sorry, but I know for a FACT that Alex doesn't think of me like that. So rather than get myself all worked up and possibly lose my boyfriend over the fact that I'm going to snap out on him eventually, I change the conversation. "No… I'm not considering Pediatrics as a specialty. I've only been on one other service and that was my very first day. I want to give Trauma, Orthopedics, General and Cardio a chance before I stick with one."

"You can always specialize in OB/GYN." He winks at me. "I have a lot to teach you…if you'd let me."

"…I'm not sure if that was supposed to be dirty or not." I crack a smile and lean my head against his shoulder. Aside from the fact that his cynicism pisses me off from time to time, I really like spending time with him. And I'm honestly very attracted to him because when he's NOT being a sarcastic piece of crap, he's actually funny.

"Take it however you want to take it." He takes his hand away from my shoulder and slides it down to my hip. Like I'm nothing but dead weight to him, he pulls me closer to him with just one tug. Any closer and I'd be sitting on his lap. "I'll let you figure out exactly what I meant by that… and when you decide what I meant, you let me know if you're willing to let me teach you a thing or two."

"I think I need to take a minute to decipher." I stretch my neck up and kiss him on the underside of his jaw.

"You are so…" He puts his hand underneath my chin and lifts my head up. Hungrily, he smashes his lips against mine. I'm still alright with kissing him. I'm fine with that. It's the second date and I promised myself—and Stephanie for that matter—before I left the house, that I wouldn't do anything below the waist on the second date. He stops kissing me for a second. "…You know what, Jo? I'm in love with you…I'm convinced." _WAIT, CHILL. Bro, chill with that "I love you" shit. Cause I DON'T LOVE YOU. This isn't even… what the fuck just happened? _He needs to stop talking, so to shut him up, I kiss him again. How does he already know that he loves me?

Maybe if I… I don't know, maybe I love him too? Maybe I'll feel those sparks when I kiss him, because he can't be this crazy to drop the L word on me this quickly. I put my hand on the back of his head, open my mouth a little wider and push his head further into my face so that the kiss is really deep. _Nope… I'm not feeling anything when I kiss him… no sparks or nothing. Nope. I don't love him. He's crazy. _But he's a really good kisser anyway.

His hands wander away from my hips while he's still tongue-deep inside my mouth. One of his hands curls itself in the lengths of my hair behind my ear while the other hand is on the crotch part of my jeans. To make sure I don't offend him too badly, I continue to kiss him but while I'm kissing him, I reach down and move his hand away from me down there. I said I wouldn't go below the waist and I won't. I pull away from his mouth for a second so I can breathe, but go right back to it. You know that tingly feeling in the pit of your stomach you get when you really want something? I'm getting that feeling and I'm scared that if I don't stop him…I'm going to do something that I don't want to do tonight. And he moves his hand back to the middle of my pants but this time, he moves his hand in a rubbing motion. Unconsciously, my legs part themselves a little bit more…allowing him to get his hand deeper between them.

Even though everything he's doing to me below my waist is clearly underneath the table hidden from the view of everyone in this bar, I still don't feel right doing this in public. I may be an easy slut but I'm not a slut that does shit in public for everyone to see. I can't believe I'm doing this… I promised… _But he said he loves me so maybe that kind of makes up for the fact that it's really only the second date…and he sounded like he meant it when he said he loves me… _I pull away out of the kiss again. "Can we go somewhere more private?" I ask quickly before I start to kiss him again.

"Come on." He grabs my hand and slides out of the booth. I stand up and follow him with my hand inside his to wherever he's leading me. I find myself stumbling while he's pulling me along. _He said he loves me and that's a big deal isn't it? Even though I don't love him he loves me and that's gotta count for something doesn't it? _He drags me by my hand past the dancefloor, past the bar and past a bunch of barstools. The bathroom? Really? _Yep. _He pushes the door open and it smells disgusting in here…probably because of the fact that this is a boys and girls bathroom. I think the bar should really invest in more bathrooms…I know it's a cheap bar but really. One bathroom?

He shuts the door behind us and locks it. The lights are already off in here so I don't bother turning them on. I've never really been too keen on having sex in the light. I'm not ashamed of my body or anything like that I just don't really think it's necessary for lights to be on while you're doing your business. There's light coming in through the cracks of the door from the outside and that's enough light for me.

As if we never even stopped, he resumes kissing me but way harder this time. He pushes me up against the wall and puts his hands underneath my legs where my knees fold. I let him pick me up because…well… I don't know…I guess I want this as much as he seems to. He moves the kissing from my lips down to my neck. I wrap my legs around his waist so he doesn't drop me and close my eyes because even though it's too dark in here for me to make out anything more than the shadows of his body and his body parts, I think I'll feel better if my eyes are closed.

He unbuttons my jeans and I help him take them off so he doesn't have to struggle. I hear my pants fall down on the floor and I kick off my sandals right along with them. While he's still kissing my neck, he takes a minute to take off his own pants. And it just happens so fast after that. My shirt is still on and so is his, so we're not completely naked. My panties are still on and so are his boxers. But he unbuttoned the little hole in the middle of his boxers to allow himself through and he grabs the base of my underwear and pulls them to the side. And he doesn't even say anything. He doesn't ask me if I'm okay, he doesn't ask me if I'm ready, he doesn't even bother to ask me if I really want this. He's not even gentle about it. He goes in rough and so hard that my bottom half smashes against the wall but god… he feels so good. And it's not long before the sounds of my gasps and moans fill up the tiny little bathroom.

**X X X **

She wasn't home when I got home and I'm grateful for that because she would've been able to tell before I even got the chance to tell her. I couldn't even hold it in until I got home. I got right in my car and before I even pulled out of the parking lot of the bar, my face was flooded with tears. I almost had to pull over driving home because I thought I was gonna wreck because I couldn't see because I was crying so hard because ashamed of myself doesn't even begin to explain how I'm feeling.

I shut the front door behind myself and leave it unlocked for Steph. I don't know where she's at but my guess is that she'll be home sooner than later. I kick my sandals off again by the door and walk awkwardly back to the bathroom. I'm walking with my legs apart because between them is sticky and gross and I don't want to feel any more disgusting than I already feel. I turn the nozzle to the shower on to the highest temperature and start to undress my disgusting self. I take my pants off and throw them in the hamper. I take my shirt off and put that in the hamper as well. Call me crazy, but I swear I can still feel everything. I can feel his spit and his tongue rolling all over my neck. The pulsating feeling between my legs is throbbing in time to his thrusts. I throw my underwear and my bra inside the hamper too and step right inside the shower.

I can't even begin to explain why I did that. I knew I was doing all the wrong things but I still did it. I knew I was breaking a promise, I knew I shouldn't have done that and I knew that I wasn't gonna do a damn thing but cry about it when I was done…but I still did it. I swear I'm such an idiot. I turn around and let the shower spray hit my back. And it's not like I was miserable the entire time I did it because I wasn't. I enjoyed every fucking second of it…I even climaxed. But it was so wrong. I don't have any common sense or good judgment because everything told me NOT to but I still did it. And just like with Professor Gaines, I really thought it was going to mean something because he actually SAID that he loved me.

I grab my washcloth and a bar of soap and start washing myself. But as dirty as I'm feeling right now…no amount of showering can take it away. I really am a slut. Steph made me feel so good about myself last night when she said that six bodies for a twenty eight year old was good but I don't feel good about myself anymore. I'm a whore and I know this. For god's sake, I sleep with every guy that ever tells me that they love me or show me ANY amount of attention. Why did I sleep with that man? Why did I do that? In a bathroom? Of a bar? I just showed him how classless I really am. I'm so ashamed of myself and I can't even stop crying long enough to properly wash my hair. I've washed my body but I can't stop crying to wash my fucking hair.

Whatever. I'll wash my hair some other time. I shut off the water and get out of the shower. I wrap my towel around my body and go into my bedroom. I'm supposed to have another date with Jason on Tuesday but I'm so scared that now that I did that, he's gonna think that we can just have sex anytime anywhere. I'm so scared that he thinks I'm a skank now. _He's gonna think that's all I'm good for is lying on my back. _I wipe my face off with my towel and sniff.

"Jo? I'm home. I ran down to the store to grab toothpaste and deodorant." She knocks on my door before she just walks in, which I appreciate. _Steph's gonna be so mad at me…_ And again, just when I thought I was all cried out, another round of tears spill out of my eyes and this time, a moan comes out with the tears. "Are you crying?"

"No. I'll be out in a second." I squeeze the towel against my body and lie back against my bed. I can feel how puffy my eyes are from crying.

"Liar." She opens up my door and just comes inside. "What's wrong?"

"I broke our promise." I say it real casually, just waiting for her reaction. She'd be right to yell at me. Hell, I don't even think I'd hold it against her if she slapped the shit out of me. I need to be slapped. But her jaw is just dropped and her eyes are wide. "Please don't look at me like that, Steph… I know." My jaw starts to tremble. "I'm so ashamed of myself… I can't… I can't do anything right to save my life. I knew it was wrong… I don't even know why I did it. I'm so disgusted with myself. I swear to god I hate myself for it. In the bathroom of the bar, though… really." I reach up and grab my pillow. I put the pillow over my face and sob so hard that my stomach muscles hurt and I have a headache. "He told me he loved me Steph and… he told me he loved me… so I just thought it was okay…because he said that to me and it messed me all up. It messed me up… I'm so mad at myself. Why do I do this to myself? I'm so…"

"What an asshole." She snatches the pillow off my face and sits down next to my head. She pats her lap and I secure my towel against my body and lie on her lap like she motioned for me to. "He's an asshole. He's an ASS. HOLE." She starts running her fingers through my hair. "If he had any respect for you, he wouldn't have even jumped at the chance to do it. And what a fuckin' dick move to do it in the bathroom. If he had ANY respect at all for you, he would've taken you to his fucking HOUSE. He's an asshole. What kind of jackass throws around the big 'I love you' on the second date? He's an asshole, Jo… He's the dirtbag, not you. He had to have planned it out. There's no way he was just gonna tell you that he loved you for the hell of it. He wanted to get in your pants. He's a dirtbag."

"But I let him…" I sniff and stare straight at my college diploma that I framed and put on my dresser. Tears are just trickling out of my eyes here and there. "He gave me a SPECK of attention and I went with it. Why do I do that, Steph? Why do I do that? Why don't I have the common sense and good judgment that everybody else has? I don't want to be a whore…"

"You're not a whore." She wipes my tears away. "He's a dickhead. He told you he loved you, which messed with your already messed-up head… it's okay, Jo. Please stop talking about yourself like that. You're not a whore and you're not disgusting and you have nothing to be ashamed of. Everybody makes bad decisions. He's such a jerk for doing that to you, though. You need to cut him loose. He has no respect for you at all. A real man wouldn't bang a girl in the bathroom. A real man would insist that they do it in a BED…the RIGHT way. Jerk."

"…It's my fault too though. I'm so… I do this all the time."

"It's not your fault. You didn't… you didn't know. He messed with your head." She keeps rubbing my hair.

"…I'm gonna be celerbite for the rest of my life." I wipe my eyes.

She giggles. "You mean celibate."

I nod. "Yeah, that too."


	9. Chapter 9

Last night was rough. Like I said before, I've had my fair share of bad nights but last night took the cake for worst overall night in my life. I'd never willingly admit this to anyone…and I'd deny it if I was ever asked, but I literally spent the entire night lying awake…crying. Izzie is the only girl that has ever made me blubber like a baby the way I did last night. I'm seriously so exhausted because in case you didn't know, crying and sleeping don't mix very well so crying was in and sleeping was out. I hope the day in Peds is slow because I need an hour in a nice, quiet on call room. I need a nap and I'm as serious as a heart attack about that.

I get to spend the first half of the day in the NICU which is actually a good thing since no new babies have been admitted since yesterday. Since there are no new cases in the NICU, I might just let Jo round on them herself because I'm sure she can handle it at this point. I'm not sure if that counts as favoritism but if it does, I don't really care. Mere and I were talking when we both came in this morning and apparently Hunt's been talking to Cristina about my "blatant favoritism towards Dr. Wilson." She said that he said if I don't stop treating her like she's superior to all other interns she'll be banned from Peds for a month. I wouldn't want to punish Jo for something that I'm doing. If I'm favoring her I haven't really noticed but I guess I'll try to stop because that would be unfair to her to be punished for my transgressions.

Speaking of Jo… she should've been up here already. I didn't go down to the locker rooms to get her because she got her pager today and that means I don't have to go get her anymore. I paged her up here, but maybe she didn't get it…or maybe she hasn't figured out how to answer it. She's late.

I grab an electronic chart off the charging dock and head towards the elevator. I'll excuse the fact that she's late for rounds today. I'll give her the benefit of the doubt and just say that maybe she's unaware of how to use the pager yet. I push the button to call the elevator to my floor and stand in front of it, waiting. I'm also not looking forward to tonight either. If sleeping without Izzie was impossible last night, I imagine that tonight will be the exact same thing. I just have to deal until Wednesday without her then maybe I'll be able to get some sleep once she's back in bed with me.

The elevator doors open and out walks a group of nurses and standing in the back behind all of them, clutching two manila lab folders to her chest is Jo. She looks like she's had a rough day already and I know that she's only just gotten here half an hour ago at the most. I step aside and wait for her to get off. Rubbing her left eye with an opened hand, she walks off and stops right where I'm standing. "I'm so sorry I'm late for rounds Alex… I…I got your page but then Dr. Robbins paged me and I wasn't real sure whose page I should've answered first…I'm sorry. But uh… here's the labs you said you wanted…" Her voice is really dry and raspy.

"What's wrong with you?" I grab the labs out of her hands and start walking in the direction of the NICU. I don't know much about her but if I didn't know any better, I'd say that she sounds like she needs to cry. She either needs to cry, she's been or crying or she just stopped crying. "Wilson, you look like crap. Go back to the locker room and get yourself together." _Don't do that. Remember what Mere said. _Mere cautioned me to tone down on the favoritism before he bans me from working with her. But it's not favoritism it's just me being a nice guy I think. "Do you need a minute?"

"No, I'm fine." She rubs her eyes so hard that I wouldn't be surprised if they popped out of her head. "I just had a really bad night. I'm really sorry for letting it affect my work, but I'm fine." She pushes her hair back out of her face as if she's really annoyed by it. "Where are we at first?" I can tell that she's trying really hard to sound cheerful and I appreciate the effort because I know how hard it is to put aside your personal issues so you can sound happy and cheerful for the kids you're about to work with.

"NICU." I stop at the doors to the NICU before I go inside so I can talk to her for a second. "It looks like it's going to be a slow day in Peds today so once we're done with rounds, if there's nothing else for us to do, you can go find an empty on call room and rest up. I had a rough night too so I know where you're coming from." She doesn't even say anything back to me. She nods her head and stifles a big, wide yawn. I open the doors to the NICU and she follows closely behind me. Since we were late for rounds, Robbins already rounded on the babies in the north and south wings. Jo and I have to round on the ones in the east and west wings.

I go over to our first baby and open up the incubator. As if she's been doing this in her sleep, Jo reaches inside the incubator and unhooks the baby's IV so we can hang a fresh bag of fluid. I just stand back and watch her. She grabs a fresh bag of fluid and hands it on top of the line. She grabs the end of the tube and pushes it into the smaller side. She screws on the top and shakes it to make sure it's on secure enough that it won't fall out. "…What did you do wrong? Your technique was flawless, but what did you do wrong here?"

"…I…" She properly disposes of the old fluid bag and looks up at the new bag she hung. "…I don't know. I… I detached the old bag, attached the new one, checked it to make sure it wouldn't fall just like you taught me how to…" She looks up at me. "Did I do something wrong?"

"…You forgot a glove, that's all. Can't deal with needles without gloves…you know that though." I help her clean up and re-sterilize the area. "You get an A minus for the day. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and say that if you had a good night's rest, you would've gotten an A plus." I wink at her to let her know I'm joking and though she's visibly tired, she gives me a smile to let me know she took it all in good fun. "Why'd you have a bad night? Just couldn't sleep?"

"…You first." She closes the incubator back up and moves along with me to the next patient. "You said you had a bad night too, didn't you?" I nod my head, looking down inside the incubator. "Well, why'd you have your bad night? You tell me and I'll tell you." Before she opens up the incubator, she leans against it and looks at me. I really need an excuse to touch her because I'm starting to doubt that she's even real again. "Oh and when I tell you, you don't have to act like you care. We don't… we don't have to act like we actually care about each other outside of work. I get that you're not really that kind of friend to me."

"Who said I didn't care about you outside of this hospital?" I unhinge the locks on the side of the incubator and prepare to open it up. She takes my hint and stops leaning against it. "Is this just a fancy way of you telling me that you don't want to be my friend outside of work? Because if it is, it sucks. You could've let me down easier than that. Harsh, Wilson. Harsh."

She laughs briefly before she starts talking again. "No Alex… I was just saying." Her laugh matches her perfectly. She sounds like a cartoon character when she laughs—very animated and cheeky. "I could totally understand if you don't want to be friends with a nothing little intern, especially when we haven't a thing in common with one another. I wouldn't be offended if you admitted that we're work friends because I guess that's better than not being friends at all." When she's looking at me, she has a permanent smile on her face. It never fades away. "You're not exactly gonna call me up and ask me to come over and drink a beer and watch the Seahawks game. So there's no obligation for you to care about my shitty night."

"I wouldn't ask about it if I didn't care, Jo." I open up the incubator and start changing the IV this time. "And you never know." I shrug my shoulders. "Maybe when you move up in the world and become a nothing little resident instead of a nothing little intern, I will invite you over for a beer. We have more in common than you think."

"Oh, that sounds promising." She rolls her eyes at me and even that is the prettiest thing I've ever seen. Everything that this girl does is effortlessly flawless. She blinks her eyes and it's like the world stops to admire the way her eyelashes flutter when she blinks. Everything she does is just perfect. "What do you and I possibly have in common? Unless you're…you know…hiding the fact that you went to Princeton as well." She leans against the incubator again once I close it back up and does that thing with her mouth where her jaw switches from side to side.

"You don't think I'm smart enough to have gotten into Princeton or Harvard?" We really do have more in common than she thinks though. If only she knew that talking to her is like talking to myself. I have a feeling that she'll feel differently once I tell her about the shitty upbringing I had as well. She'd probably be surprised to know that about me. "Actually, I—"

She interrupts me but she does it in a way that's hard to find it offensive. She did it politely. "I had a hard time sleeping last night because I spent most of the night crying….because I'm one of those girls where once I start crying I can't really stop…so it was just bad last night. I'm okay now but I'm really tired since I didn't get sleep." She swats her hair out of her face again. "There. That's my story…what's yours?"

"Same as yours, actually." I admit because she seems like she was being brutally honest with me and I think she deserves that same respect. I guess I'll tell her about the fact that I was a foster child as well some other time. "But it was a double whammy with me because I had to sleep alone…that kind of thing. I guess it was just one of those nights for both of us." I properly close up the incubator and lock it up so we can move on in our rounds.

"…Why were you crying?" She's just as nosy as I am because I was half a second away from asking her the same thing. "You just don't strike me as the type of guy that cries a lot… it must've been a pretty bad situation for you to cry…"

"Ehh… you know… fiancé troubles are enough to make any decent man cry." I motion with my hand for her to follow me.

"…Oh. Yeah, I get that."

"How about you? What were you crying for?"

"I…" She starts to smile but it's out of discomfort rather than amusement. Again, I don't know much about her, but the more time I spend with her, the more I learn about her. And if she's as much like me as I think she is, it's easy to tell what reason she's smiling for when she does smile. "I had a…. bad… sexual….encounter last night, okay?" She's embarrassed and that's what I'm collecting from the type of smile she has on her face. Plus her cheeks are rosy and she can't even look me in my eye.

"With the jerk from OB?" _Did I just call him a jerk? Whoops. That slipped out… but whatever. She ought to know that he's a jerk if she doesn't know already. _

"…He's not a jerk." Yeah, the way she said that…I'm not totally buying the fact that she really believes that. It's almost like she's trying to convince herself that he's not a jerk more than she's trying to convince me. "But yeah…." She still can't look me in my eye so she looks away from me.

"Whatever." I mutter. I don't even want to continue this conversation. It's just not something I'm interested in hearing about. The guy's a tool and it only makes sense if he's not good in bed. He must really suck in order to make her cry over it though. _Unless he hurt her, and that's why she was crying. Nope. _I force that thought out of my mind. Regardless, I'm not interested in hearing anything she has to say about whatever went on in bed with him last night. "Come on… we have to finish rounds." On the plus side… I get to spend the whole day with her and the day just started.

**Jo's Point of View.**

"Alex…" I shove my hand in the bag of potato chips I'm eating for lunch and take one out so I can eat it. I tried to show him the place outside that Steph, Leah, Heather, Shane and I sit at when we get a free minute. He said it smelled like old rotten nasty fish and that he wasn't sitting out there. So he took me to the tunnels…where he and his buddies sit and chill when they have a free minute. I must admit that the tunnels beat sitting outside smelling all the gross smells from the cafeteria. Sometimes it smells good out there but most of the time it stinks. "What did you mean earlier when you said that we have a lot more in common than I think? Should I be worried?" I shove the chip in my mouth. We both agreed that if we went to on call rooms to sleep during our lunch hours that we both just wouldn't wake up because we're both exhausted so that's why we just came down here instead. He's actually a really good friend. I don't know, maybe I'm crazy but I swear other than Steph, he's my bestie.

"You've spent more than six hours with me today and you're really gonna tell me that throughout our conversations, there's NOTHING that we talked about that made you say 'hey… we have that in common'? I know we talked about a lot of things but I also know that your brain can retain at least 75% of the conversations." He opted to eat a sandwich from the cafeteria as opposed to my bag of Sour Cream and Onion chips. I think it's a turkey sandwich. At least that's what it smells like.

"Well yeah… but when you said it, you kind of sounded like you meant we share more than just a mutual hatred for the Washington Redskins and a love for Green Day in common." I start filing through my brain for something that might've slipped my mind. So far today, I've learned that his birthday is January 5th, he went to Iowa State on a wrestling scholarship, he played football in high school, he likes to go running in the mornings, his favorite band is Green Day, his favorite song at the moment is "Black Widow" but he'd never willingly admit that, and he has a celebrity crush on Iggy Azalea. I've been teasing him by randomly singing bits and pieces of Black Widow all day, by the way.

"I'm pretty familiar with the streets too." He takes another bite of his sandwich and says that like it's not that big of a deal.

"…Don't make fun of me for being a street kid." I softly throw a punch his way. "Just when I think you're done being a douchebag you start up again."

"Only I'm not makin' fun of you."

I wrinkle my eyebrows and look at him. "…Really?" I put my bag of chips down and fold my arms across my chest. "How many foster homes did you get kicked out of before you had to live in your car, Ace?"

"Seventeen… and I didn't really live in my car, I went straight to juvi. You couldn't handle juvi… punk." Is he serious? He was a street kid too? What? But he is wrong about me not being able to handle juvi. I've been to jail… I think I can handle juvi. "Those kids in juvi would chew you up and spit you out."

"Mhm." I roll my eyes. "Well did you ever have to deal with junkies beating on your bedroom windshield? Ever catch yourself praying at that they'd get tired before they put a brick through the window?"

"…Nah." He finishes the last bite of his sandwich. "But that's only 'cause my dad was the junkie and he didn't break windows…he went straight to breaking fingers. You didn't have to watch your crazy mom go after your baby brother with a steak knife."

"…Touché." I put my head against the wall and sigh. "So maybe we do have more in common than I thought." I look over at him. "It's nice to have someone that understands what it's like to be homeless… I try to talk to Steph about it but she doesn't quite understand that I'm not used to… big cozy beds, hot showers whenever I please and food that doesn't come from a trashcan."

"Whoa… speak for yourself, Hobo Jo. I wasn't a garbage-eater like you."

_Should I do this to him? I don't know… should I? I don't know if I want to do this to him right now. Ehh whatever, I'm going for it. _I put my head down and hold my face in my hands. I don't even try to be quiet about it, I just go for the full out wailing. "Mmmm…." My tears are dripping down my arms.

"…Shit… Shit, Jo… Jo don't cry. I'm sorry." He grabs my arm and tries to pull my hands away from my face but I just shake my head and keep crying. "Hey… hey, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. You're not… you're not a garbage-eater. I didn't mean that." He keeps trying to comfort me but I'm still wailing so loud that I probably sound like a seven year old. "You called yourself homeless, so I just thought… I thought it was okay. I'm sorry. Which one was it? Was it the Hobo Jo thing or was it the garbage-eater thing? I'm sorry, alright?"

I take my hands away from my face and look at him, smiling. "Look at your face. I got you. I got you. You're so gullible, my god. I got you." I pull my sleeve down and tilt my head so I can wipe my fake tears away. "Oh, I so got you. I got you good."

"…You're faking?"

"Uh huh." I nod and keep wiping my face off until I'm sure that I've gotten every tear. "I got you…"

"You can just cry like that?"

"Tears, baby. I got myself out of a lot of shit like this." I tilt my head back so my nose doesn't run. "Turn on the waterworks and you can get yourself out of almost anything… number one tool of a street kid is tears. It's a gift, really. I can't believe you didn't know." I put the palm of my hand to my nose for extra insurance that it won't run.

"Oh yeah right… That crap would never work for me. That crap would never work on a guy."

"You're wrong." I push my hair out of my face and clear my throat. "A girl crying is one thing, but when a guy cries… that freaks EVERYONE out. Want me to teach you?"

"…You're crazy. You're a frickin' con artist." He's looking at me with a wide smile on his face but he's shaking his head like I just told him the secret to life.

"You want me to teach you or not?" I sit up against the wall and shift my position so that I'm facing him. I cross my legs and look at him. "Seriously come on…I'll teach you. Look at me." He puts his garbage from his lunch behind himself and turns to face me. This gurney that we're sitting on is pretty uncomfortable and it's making my ass hurt but I'll deal with it. "Okay, you just gotta…feel it. Like… think back. What's the nastiest thing someone's ever said to you?"

"…My first girlfriend told me that she was a squirter and that was pretty gross at the time to sixteen year old me…"

I put my head down, hold my stomach and laugh HARD. "Eww my god, that's totally not what I meant by nasty… you weirdo. That's not what I meant." I can't stop laughing. Oh god this is the hardest I've ever laughed in my life. "That is NOT what I meant, Alex…"

"…Oh. Well shit, oops." He laughs too. "You meant nasty as in mean, didn't you?"

"Yeah… that kind of nasty." I shake my head and just stare into his eyes. I've never felt like this before. I've never felt so naturally myself in front of a guy before. I'm bursting out in gut-busting laughter with him and I'm not even trying. I kind of like this feeling… "And I'm glad that you clarified that you were sixteen when she told you that, because most guys consider that a blessing not gross."

"Yeah I totally appreciate that these days." He shakes his head and keeps smiling. "You don't find many girls that can do that. It really is a blessing now that I think about it."

"It's actually a curse." I mumble but I can tell by the look on his face that he caught that. "…New subject." I tuck my hair behind my ear.

"…Why's it a curse?" He puts his hands on his knees and leans forward to get all up in my face like he's purposely, blatantly being nosy.

"I don't want to talk about this with you! This is weird!" I cover my face with my hands and giggle. "You totally weren't even supposed to hear that…"

"Well we're friends, aren't we? Isn't this kind of what friends talk about? I mean… me and Avery talk about this kind of crap all the time but it is kind of weird talking about it with a girl…I'll give you that."

"…Okay, we can be gross for…" I glance up at the clock hanging on the wall. "Five minutes." Because I know that he is EXACTLY like me and he's NOT going to let this subject go, I'm going to have to explain what I meant by "it's a curse" to him. "…It kinda just like…" I put my tongue in my cheek. "It goes everywhere and it's messy." That's the most PG-rated way I can put that.

"I've heard someone say that before." He nods like it's not even in the least bit gross to him. "I actually had a girlfriend in college that would never orgasm because she didn't want to do that because it was messy. I thought she was nuts, but hey…"

"It IS messy though… that's why I do it the other way…because it's less of a hassle to deal with and I don't feel guilty for like… getting it everywhere."

"You can do BOTH?"

"…Yeah? I thought all girls did the clean way and then a select few did it the messy way. I thought… is it not normal to do both?" I can't believe I'm sitting here talking to him about this. I can't believe this… this is so awkward but at the same time, it's so easy. It's easy to talk to him. "I mean I tend to do the other way because doing it the one way is really stressful… and…" I just shake my head.

"….You're a freak, aren't you?" He looks at me through squinted eyes. "You are a fuh-reak."

"…I guess." I shrug my shoulders and giggle. "I just like sex. And I don't feel like it should be okay for a guy to like sex but the second a girl says that she likes to have sex, she's a whore. That's not fair."

"I don't think you're a whore for liking sex." He wipes the palms of his hands on his scrub pants. "I think Chest Peckwell is lucky, that's what I think."

Jason is the LAST thing I want to talk about. I was having such a good time without talking about him. I'm not talking about him…I refuse. "So, five minutes is up…" I move my hair out of my way again. "…Back to teaching you how to cry…" I clap my hands enthusiastically and look at him some more. "So yeah… think about the MEANEST thing someone's ever said to you. You have to feel it… feel it in your… feelings. And think about it."

"I don't have feelings."

"You have feelings, Alex… I've seen them." I reach over and grab ahold of his hand. He flinches away from me like I burned him when I touched him which makes me loosen up a little bit. "When you deal with those little babies… you have feelings." I have feelings too…and they're getting stronger just by sitting here with him. "…Think about when your fiancé kisses you…" My heart drops when I say the word "fiancé." I bite my lip and scoot closer to him. "Think about when she kisses you…and think about when she eases in…" I don't even notice that I'm easing in as I'm coaching him through it until our noses are almost touching. "…Think about that moment just before your lips touch…and how you'd feel if you never felt that again…"

Our faces are so close to one another's that my nose is touching his. I can feel his breath against my upper lip as we're breathing. And I don't know, but my eyes close and so do his.

"KAREV AND WILSON! THERE YOU TWO ARE!" I pull away from him so fast when I hear somebody interrupt the moment. Like I'm going to get caught doing something I'm not supposed to be doing. He pulls away from me with the same urgency and it's not until I see and feel him pulling away from me that I realize his fingers were interlocked inside mine. "WHY AREN'T YOU TWO ANSWERING YOUR PAGERS?!" Dr. Robbins is fuming mad.

I was about to kiss him. I was about to kiss him and I was about to fall into a trance and I was about to die and go to heaven for a minute there. I was about to do the only thing that's ever felt right in my life. It felt so right to kiss him even though I know that I would've made a mistake that would've inevitably lead to me crying about it later by just kissing him. But it felt so right to do… I gotta get off Peds. I have to get off his services. I'm celibate for one and for two, I'm not going to fall for a married or soon-to-be-married man. I'm not gonna allow myself to do that. I'm not setting myself up for that kind of rejection…I can't do that to myself. I have to get off Pediatrics.

"…I'm… I'm gonna go down to the pit and see if anybody needs me down there." I hop down off the gurney quickly before I start to get all mixed up. I can feel the tears coming on and the tears that I'm close to crying aren't fake tears that I use to get myself out of shit. These tears that are forming behind my eyes are real as hell and I don't want him to see them fall. I even leave my half-eaten bag of chips behind as I start lightly jogging down the hall.

"Jo!" I hear him calling after me and even though I'm telling myself not to slow down, my common sense and good judgment problem takes over and I stop running and turn around to look at him. "You don't have to go down to the pit…" He says. I shake my head and turn back around.

Pull it together, Josephine. Pull. It. Together. You're NOT falling for him… you're not allowed. Get your shit together.


	10. Chapter 10

"So, five minutes is up." She pushes her hair out of her face and I watch her shoulders heave as she sighs. Other than Mere, I don't think I've ever clicked this well with a female. Of course I've had lots of lady friends in my lifetime but most of them—if not all of them, have wanted to have sex at some point in time. With Jo, it's different. I've been talking to her about everything and anything today and it feels so natural…like she's just one of the guys. "…Back to teaching you how to cry…" With a toothless smile spread across her thick pink lips, she claps her hands and gazes at me. "So yeah… think about the MEANEST thing someone's ever said to you. You have to feel it… feel it in your… feelings. And think about it."

"I don't have feelings." I look back at her with the same friendly innocence she's looking at me with. The shitty upbringings aren't the only things we have in common, I've found. In fact, the shitty upbringings don't even scratch the surface. It's not like we spent the entire day so far together playing 20 Questions or anything like that. It's just that when we talk, information starts spilling out and more and more so I'm convinced that this girl is the reincarnation of myself from a past life. Within the last five or six hours of being with her, I've gathered that her birthday is May 5th, she's 28, her favorite color is purple, she doesn't watch much TV but when she does, she likes to watch a show called Awkward, Gossip Girl and a show called Girl Code. She doesn't have a favorite movie but if she had to pick one, she said it's a tie between Monsters Inc. and Monsters University but both Forrest Gump and Men In Black come in a close second. And she doesn't have a favorite song but she hates almost everything that plays on the radio.

"You have feelings, Alex… I've seen them." Out of the clear blue, she outstretches her hand and grabs ahold of mine. Incidentally, I flinch away from her when she does that but solely because I wasn't expecting her to do that. I've waited a while to have an excuse to touch her on my own and now she's touching me on her own whim. I think I finally have some closure within my mind that says "Yes Alex, she's real and you know she's real now because you touched her." Her hands are miniature compared to mine. Her fingers are slender and the skin on her palm is so soft and smooth. I glance down at her fingernails, which are neatly trimmed and clean but really long as well. "When you deal with those little babies… you have feelings."

I notice while she's talking, she's moving closer to me but it's probably just because she's sliding off the edge of the gurney we're sitting on. "…Think about when your fiancé kisses you…" And now she's making me think about Iz which completely ruins it for me. She was getting a little too close to me and I would've probably stopped her before things got too serious anyway, but the fact that she just mentioned Iz really just did it for me. I watch her mouth and she bites her lip and inches closer to me again. "Think about when she kisses you…and think about when she eases in…" While she's coaching me through what it's like when I kiss Iz, I notice that she's getting closer and closer. "Think about that moment just before your lips touch…and how you'd feel if you never felt that again…"

Her face is so close to mine that our noses are touching…and for some reason… I don't really have the willpower to pull away from her just yet. I can feel her breath against my lips as we're breathing in tune with each other. Her eyes flutter shut for a brief moment before she unsteadily opens them back up again. Some place in the back of my mind isn't telling me that this is wrong. It feels so right to be in this position with her and as much as I don't want to want this…I can't deny the fact that I wouldn't mind sharing a kiss with her. At the same time, both our heads turn and we both close our eyes.

"KAREV AND WILSON!" She pulls away from me so fast that it's like a fire was lit under her ass and I scoot away as well, smoothing my hands over my pants and acting like nothing just happened. I know Robbins wouldn't tell Izzie that I just got caught almost kissing an intern but it's still the principal of the fact that I was doing something I wasn't supposed to be doing. Plus, I don't think Robbins would care, but I'm pretty sure the whole almost-kissing-Jo thing qualifies as favoritism and Jo might get thrown off Peds for that. "WHY AREN'T YOU TWO ANSWERING YOUR PAGERS?!" I untangle my fingers from hers because we were unconsciously holding hands.

"…I'm… I'm gonna go down to the pit and see if anybody needs me down there." She springs up off the gurney so fast that she leaves her chips behind as well. She nearly runs away from me, shielding her face as if there's something she doesn't want me to see.

"Jo!" I'm confused as to why she's running away from me to get down to the pit. She doesn't have to go to the pit. She can stay on Peds with me and we just don't have to talk about what just happened…or _almost _happened. To be completely and totally honest, I don't even want to talk nor think about what just went down. That would've been a huge mistake and there would've been NO excuse for that if that had happened. As soon as I call her name, she spins around to look at me from the distance she's already at down the hallway, her hair flaring out and becoming messy with her movements. She's a pretty decent distance away from me so I can't be completely sure, but I think she's crying from what I can see. Her eyes are glistening like they're wet. "You don't have to go down to the pit…" I try to convince her to stay with me but she shakes her head and keeps walking away from me.

I don't know whether I should go after her or let her walk away. I'm confused because clearly, walking away is something she wants to do. I didn't tell her she had to get away from me and I sure as hell didn't tell her that she had to get up off the gurney we were just sharing. Since I'm not the one that told her she had to go, I'm guessing that walking way is something she wanted to do herself. So should I go after her and make sure she knows that what just happened is in the past? Or should I let her walk away like she wants?

Despite the fact that the tail end of the conversation we just had was enough to make me want to lie her down on the gurney we were sitting on and take full advantage of the fact that she said she's a sexual person. Despite the fact that I almost kissed her and I know for a fact that if I had kissed her, I probably wouldn't have been able to help myself and I would've AT LEAST gotten some finger action in there or something. Despite all of those things, I have actually developed a friendship with her. In addition to the fact that she's hot, she's actually a really cool friend…and the things we talked about are things that I would talk to Mere, Cristina or even Avery about. So since I realize that I actually enjoyed her company aside from the almost kiss and the conversation that turned me on that we are friends, I get off the gurney and go after her.

"Jo, wait up!" I call after her, pushing past Arizona and trying to slow her down as best as I can. When I call her name, she slows down a little bit but she's still walking pretty fast. "Jo!" _Regardless of the fact that she's a friend to you, she is your subordinate. She can't tell you what she's going to and what she's not going to do. _I stop walking after her dead in my tracks and put my hands on my hips. "WILSON! GET BACK HERE!" My throat hurts from yelling at her but I'm serious. She can't just up and go down to the pit if I didn't tell her to. I think she got the picture through my yelling because she stops jogging immediately. "We still got work to do! I didn't tell you to go to the pit!"

She has her back still turned to me but I can tell by her posture that she's not all the way there. Since I got her to stop walking, I start walking towards her and when I approach her, I swear I can hear her crying. W_hat's she crying for? There's literally no reason for her to be crying. NOTHING happened. _"The Peds floor is this way…. Not that way." I put my hand on her shoulder and she snatches away from me. "Wilson, you've gotta cut it out. Consider this a lesson." I give up on touching her because clearly she doesn't want me to. "You're gonna have crappy days at work but you've gotta brush it off because people are counting on you…you hear me?" She brings her hand up to wipe her tears away I assume but I don't know for sure because I can't see her face. "People are counting on you to fix the problems that other people cannot fix… and if you can't do that all because you're having a little tantrum, then you need to get the hell out of this program."

I hear her sniff and slowly, she turns back to face me. "…So we're just not gonna talk about it?" The skin around her nostrils is pink, probably from her rubbing her nose. Her eyes are red rimmed and her already bright brown eyes are sparkling even more so with the presence of tears. _How is this girl this beautiful no matter what? How is she pretty even when she's crying? I don't get it… _"Is that how we're gonna play it? …We're just not gonna talk about it?" She's REALLY upset and I feel kind of bad. I want to ask her what the reason behind her tears is, but I have a better idea.

"Talk about what?" Now of course I know what she's talking about. I'm not stupid and I know EXACTLY what she's talking about. But I can see just how much this whole thing is tearing her up so if it will stop her from crying and being upset, then no…we won't talk about it. We'll just forget about it. We won't even bring it up.

"Thank you." She whispers and clears her throat. "…So uh… what do we have to do?" And just like that, she pulls herself together.

"We have a few more babies to finish up rounds on because a few more got admitted since this morning and then we have to go check on the older kids… our day in the NICU is almost done. Come on." I motion with her hand to follow me and she does. I won't lie… I kind of wish we could talk about what just happened. I'm obviously still against cheating on my fiancé, but I don't feel like just forgetting about the fact we almost shared a kiss is the right thing to do. I'm over the moon about the fact that I didn't kiss Jo and I honestly don't wish that I would've. I just wish that we could talk about it so it never happens again.

But Jo doesn't want to talk about it and so we won't.

**X X X **

"So what was the deal with you and Wilson in the tunnels?" While I'm busy finishing up her post-op notes, Arizona pops up next to me and sticks her chart back on the charging dock. I knew she was going to ask about it. I knew that it was only a matter of time before she asked about it and to be honest, I'm surprised this didn't come up sooner. "…Because I'm not going to assume that it was what it looked like it was…but if it was what it looked like it was…then what the hell?"

"It wasn't what it looked like it was." I mumble while pretending to be super busy with finishing these notes. "She was bummed out today about something that happened to her last night and she needed a friend, that's all it was. She was bummed because—"

"So you comfort her by kissing her?" She gives me a slap on my arm that's not hard but hard enough to sting a little bit. "What are you doing, idiot? Have you not learned ANYTHING from me? Sleeping with your co—"

"Whoa, wait…" I put down the pen I was using to write the notes and look at her. "I'm not hooking up with Jo. She's my friend and that's all. There's no sleeping with her, there's no feelings for her, there's NOTHING there but friendliness…so butt out."

"I'm just saying that you have a fiancé and you have a life and I get that she's young and she's pretty but—"

"Get out of my business, okay? I HAVE not, WILL not and don't INTEND on sleeping with that girl. You people frickin' kill me around here, always trying to give me guidance. Bull crap, alright? It's all bull. Don't try to guide me on what to avoid with my relationship when you can't even fix your own. She's a good friend and she's a quick learner and she knows what to do with these babies before I even have to TELL her what to do. Stop acting like it's a crime to have a favorite student…I was yours." I close up the book of notes I was just doing and slide it across the counter at her.

"No Alex, you were my favorite student when you decided to specialize in MY specialty. I have no choice BUT to like you because I also have no choice BUT to teach you something! You being my favorite and her being your favorite are two totally different things. You don't have to tell me how good she is because I've seen it myself but how is she supposed to get a well-rounded education here if your tongue is down her throat? What kind of service do you think I'm running here, Karev? I shouldn't hav—"

"You've got the wrong idea! I never—"

"SHUT IT! I'M SPEAKING AND YOU'RE NOT." Like I said earlier, Robbins is PISSED. She never yells like this…so I take her hint and just shut up. "I've already put too much time and effort into grooming you to be just like me for you to just throw it all away on some intern. I'm not going to let you get your head wrapped up in her…I WON'T let it happen." She snatches the book of her post-op notes off the counter and tucks it under her arm. "She's banned from Pediatrics until further notice and that's not my orders, that's Chief Hunt's orders."

"You ran and told the chief?" I throw my hands up. "I never even kissed her. It almost happened but it DIDN'T and we were both fine to work with each other for the rest of the day. You're WAY overreacting with this…" I take a step back and take a deep breath. I'm LIVID right now but if I mouth off to Robbins I know I can kiss a lot of things goodbye. "Fine. I'll go tell Jo that she got banned for something that DIDN'T happen."

"No, you stay away from her. I've already told her. She's on Hunt's service all day tomorrow and that's where she'll stay until the both of us feel that you two are on level grounds with each other."

"…Bullshit." I mumble and walk away. How can they just tell me that I can't work with Jo because we ALMOST kissed? It wasn't even that serious, I'm telling you it wasn't. We DIDN'T kiss and we were FINE for the rest of the day to work together. We didn't talk about it. Instead, we talked about how much we'd like to go see Guns N Roses and Journey in concert back in their glory days. We talked about how she hates Led Zeplin but loves Fleetwood Mac. She teased me a little more for liking that Black Widow song but I had to explain to her that Izzie likes to play the radio while she bakes and she bakes A LOT. She asked me if I had ever heard of John Mayer and I told her no. She told me to go listen to a couple of his albums tonight and let her know how I like him tomorrow and I told her to go listen to Michael Buble. She also told me to go home and rent The Breakfast Club since I've never seen it and that was it. Our entire conversation was friendly after that slip-up…and now she's banned from Peds?

I feel like I owe her an apology, so maybe I'll just go and tell her that I'm sorry that she got banned from Peds. She's probably on her way home for the night because it's 7:30 and her shift was over half an hour ago. She'll probably be in the locker rooms. I stuff my hands in my white coat pockets and stride to the stairs. The locker rooms are only down one flight of steps so it's kind of pointless to take an elevator down there. I'm walking past a conference room when all of a sudden, like it's out of a movie, I hear the bantering of two people going back and forth…and something in my gut tells me to look in. And when I do…of course she and Peckwell are in there.

_Never mind then…She's busy and I'm going back upstairs._

**Jo's Point of View.**

"I have to hear rumors going around the whole damn hospital that you and Karev are kissing in the tunnels? And then I have to hear you lie about it?" My back is against the wall and he's hovering over my body with both his hands on either side of me. His face is so close to mine that if he moved closer by about a half inch, our noses would be touching. I don't think I like this too much… "I knew something was up with you and him. I KNEW it." He's yelling at me like I'm his daughter and not someone he's in a relationship with. "Whose idea was it to kiss? Huh? Was it yours?"

"No Jason! Damn! How many times do I have to tell you that I didn't even kiss him! We didn't kiss, I swear. I don't know how many times I have to emphasize that point to you…" I'm really confused as to why he's yelling at me so much. Of course I know that he's pissed because he thinks that Alex and I actually kissed today and I get that. He has the right to be pissed because I AM his girlfriend (for lack of a better word) or whatever. I don't think I'd be as pissy as he is with me if I found out that he kissed another girl but Jason clearly feels differently about me. Regardless, I understand that he's angry with me for it and I understand… but where does he think he gets the right to yell at me like I'm not a grown ass woman?

"See, this is why we're never gonna work out. This is exactly why. You're LYING to me, Jo… I heard all about what happened in the tunnels." He moves his hands away from me and starts pacing around the room. "I don't know why you insist on lying to me when I already know the goddamn truth. Just fess up to it. You want to break up, don't you? You have such a fucked up view on relationships that you just want to break up with me. I know you do."

"See, now you're putting words in my mouth." I bawl my hands up into fists and squeeze them. He's REALLY starting to piss me off because he's doing two of my pet peeves. He's accusing me of doing something that I REALLY did not do and he's calling me a liar. I may lie about some things but I'm not lying about this and I can't STAND being called a liar when I'm telling the truth. "I didn't FUCKING kiss him and I never FUCKING said that I wanted to break up! STOP putting words in my mouth! I don't give a shit if you don't believe me but you're NOT gonna keep yelling at me like this and accusing me of doing something that I DIDN'T do. I'm not your goddamn child."

"No, you're NOT my child but you ARE my girlfriend and that means you're mine now…got it?" _Oh come on. Just because I had sex with you one measly time doesn't mean you're entitled to be my freaking keeper. It was just sex. _"Which means I don't want you kissing anybody, I don't want anybody touching you…I don't even want anybody to BREATHE on you because you're MINE. What the hell do you think a commitment means?" _Commitment? We didn't make a commitment! _"Two people in a committed relationship means we're committed to EACH OTHER, Jo. I'm not kissing or having sex with any other women, so why are you sleeping with and kissing other men?!"

"OH MY GOD I'M TELLING YOU THE TRUTH! I never kissed him! We were talking and the talking got personal and that was IT. I'm telling you the TRUTH! I shouldn't have to justify myself to you, you should just trust that I'm telling the truth! You're acting like I made a sacred promise to MARRY you and I'm NOT sleeping with anybody else, let's be clear about that! I haven't slept with any—"

"Don't tell me you're getting ready to lie again." He shakes his head and chuckles which sends a chill of irritation throughout my body. I could punch his fucking teeth down his throat, that's how much that little snicker just irritated me.

"Will you let me fucking talk?! I can't get a word in edgewise with—"

"You don't need to get a word in. You were about to tell me a bold-faced damn lie to my FACE. You were about to tell me that you haven't slept with anybody else other than me which we ALL know is a damn lie. I know a virgin when I see one and I know a slut when I see one…and let's just say you're not the previous."

My jaw involuntarily drops. I can't believe he just called me a slut… "…I wasn't even going to claim to be a virgin before I met you. I wasn't gonna imply that…" I really want to kill him off right now. "I was going to say that I haven't slept with anybody BESIDES you in the last few months, you son of a bitch. But you know…since you have a problem with letting me talk!"

"I'm just saying that a virgin wouldn't let me talk her into fucking in the bathroom, that's all. So just in case you were going to try and—"

"Fuck you." I push my way past him and go to the door so I can leave because I can't be in this room with him any longer. If I remain in this room with him, I WILL end up hurting this man and I don't want to do that. I can't help but start mumbling under my breath as I prepare to go home for the night. "…Getting on my damn nerves accusing me of something I didn't do…" It's fine that he thinks I'm a slut. I seriously DON'T care that he thinks that about me. He's never getting in my pants again and that's that. I don't care if we're still dating a year from now; I'm NEVER sleeping with him again. I'll take Steph up on her offer to buy me a vibrator before I sleep with him again and I mean that.

**X X X **

"Are you in a better mood now?" After nearly ten whole minutes of me sitting in dead silence with the exception of my shitty little iPod playing music, Steph breaks into my room. She's asking because earlier back in the hospital, I snapped on her when she asked me about the rumor going around about me and Alex. I didn't snap on her on purpose, I was just irritated about the fact that I really wanted to kiss him and I didn't and then I was irritated about the fact that I got banned from Pediatrics. She caught me at a bad time. Now I've just gotten out of the shower half an hour ago, I ate some frozen French bread pizza for dinner so I'm not hungry and I've been listening to this new artist that Alex turned me on to, so yeah…I'm in a better mood.

I pause my music and sit up against my bed's headboard. "…Yeah." I tuck my hair behind my ear and cross my legs in preparation for her to sit down so we can talk. "Sorry about earlier…you just caught me at a bad time." I explain.

"Whatcha listenin' to?" She crawls up next to me on my bed and picks one of my headphones out of my ear. She nonchalantly unpauses the music. "Michael Buble… nice."

"Yep."

"So are you ready to talk?" She asks. I shrug my shoulders. "…What's the story about you kissing Karev in the tunnels? I've been hearing lots of shit…"

"I didn't kiss him." I bite my lip. "I wanted to…but I didn't." I slam my head back against the wall and sigh. "…He's so perfect, Steph. I just don't understand…." I realize that I didn't really get all my tears out earlier and I feel them coming back on strong right now. "You know how they always say that everyone in this world has one person that they're just…meant to be with?" I bite my lip. "What if that's him, Steph? Then what? What if he's my person? I've never felt the way I felt today…EVER. I've never felt that way before. And I feel like…he's my best friend but…" I sigh again. I can't really explain my feelings so I just won't. "…Whatever. I don't care." I shake my head. I've had a long day today. "I want to go to bed…"

"…Alright." She stands up off my bed. "But what about Chest Peckwell?"

"I said I'm going to bed, Steph."


	11. Chapter 11

I wonder whose service I'm going to be put on today. It's been three days since I've been kicked off Pediatrics and I've already been on almost everyone in this hospital's service. I was on Trauma with Dr. Kepner and Chief Hunt on the first day of my banning from Peds and it was so fast and demanding that my head spun trying to remember everyone's vitals enough to triage them. I know interns don't specialize, but I know for certain that trauma will NOT be my specialty. I'm not quick enough for it. Also, I was on General with Dr. Bailey two days ago and I absolutely hated it. It was so boring just sitting there and watching her run the same bowel for hours on end trying to find dead tissue. I almost fell asleep twice. Cardio yesterday with Dr. Yang wasn't so bad except for the fact that she just expected way too from me because she was comparing me to Stephanie the whole time. The whole time it was "I don't have to tell Edwards this, she already knows." I wanted so bad to scream at her and say I'M JO WILSON, NOT STEPHANIE EDWARDS. CAN YOU READ MY GODDAMNED NAME TAG?

Speaking of Steph, she woke up with a really bad stomachache this morning so she called in sick. She left me here to fend for myself against Leah, Heather and Shane. She said this morning before I left that today would be good for me to socialize with other people but have I ever mentioned that I suck at making friends? I sit down on the benches in front of the lockers and take off my leather boots. It was pouring down raining when I left the house but as soon as I got here, the sun started shining. Seattle weather is so backwards. Because my boots are wet, I sit them in the empty space beneath my locker so they can dry without getting anything else wet.

While I'm still sitting, I grab the rim of my black long sleeved t-shirt and pull it over my head. I'm not fat or anything but while I'm sitting down, I have a roll. Just one and it's really small and it's not like I have a bunch of rolls that bigger people have. I just have one roll on my gut while I'm sitting down and it was never really there until just recently. Living with Steph has its perks but gaining weight isn't one of them. Sure I love the fact that I can eat whenever I feel like it and I never go to bed hungry, but I've gained like five pounds in the last two weeks. I'm getting pudgy.

Across from my locker, both Leah and Heather start to undress themselves as well. "Hey Jo…" Heather is the first one out of the two to greet me. After Heather speaks, Leah just waves. "Steph running late today?"

"She's not feeling well…she couldn't even get out of bed." I stand up off the bench and adjust the cups of my bra so no parts of my boobs fall out. That happened to me while I was getting dressed in here yesterday to go home for the night. Nobody else saw except for Steph so I was grateful for that but it was still embarrassing. It was so awkward, too. My boob just fell out and I was just like… oh god. Steph got a kick out of it but I was mortified. I move my hair over to the side so it's not tickling the middle of my back until I put it in a ponytail and grab my scrub top out of my locker.

"Ouch…" Leah's voice comes out in something that's crossed between a whisper and a squeal. When I turn around, her eyebrows are crinkled like she's wincing in pain as she outstretches her hand and tilts her head like she's examining something on my body. "Does that hurt?" She softly puts her warm, clammy hand on my back. "It looks like YOU need to be the one home in bed…ouch."

"Oh, that?" I tilt my head back and to the side to look at the spot on my back she's touching the best as I can. Of course I can't see it but I saw it this morning in the mirror when I was brushing my teeth. I woke up this morning and I was hurting pretty bad so I looked at it in the bathroom. It does look pretty bad but it honestly doesn't hurt that bad except for when I stretch. "Nah, it doesn't hurt." I shove my scrub top over my head and pull my hair through the head hole. "…Must've happened last night at Jason's or something…" I grab my pants and shut my locker. On the other hand, I'm glad that Stephanie isn't here today. If she were here, she'd make lying about how I got the humungous bruise on my back really awkward because she knows the truth about how I got it. Steph witnessed how I got it and if she had never witnessed it, I would've probably lied to her about it as well.

"What were you doing on your back?" Heather's voice is full of dry sarcasm. I just wink at her. Good…they're thinking exactly what I want them to think. I mean I really don't care exactly HOW they believe I got the bruise as long as they don't know the whole truth. I'm not really ashamed of the reason behind the bruise I'm just not in the mood to explain or talk about it. And okay, maybe I am a little bit ashamed but not much. "I knew there was a reason you've been in such a good mood." Heather muses as she's dragging a brush through her wispy, shoulder-length blonde hair. "Chest Peckwell's pipe must be pretty good."

…I wouldn't go that far, but if that's what she thinks then so be it. I nod my head to avoid having to speak another lie and take off my jeans. I guess I just don't want them to know because I don't want them to think I'm _that _girl. I don't want them to think that I'm that girl that gets talked about all the time because she stays with a guy that thinks it's cute to push her around. I know it doesn't really matter, but if it's any consolidation, last night was really the first time me and Jason's fight got physical. We've been fighting since four days ago. It started in the conference room when he tried to "confront" me about kissing Alex and it hasn't died down since. He calls me a liar every single day and I got sick of it last night.

He asked me to come over to his house so we could squash all of our issues last night. I didn't feel comfortable with going over his house because then we would be alone and I had a feeling that something horrible was going to happen. So to avoid a fight, I just told him to come to me. I asked Steph if he could come over and she said that it was okay if he did as long as she didn't have to listen to us have sex. I told her that I wasn't having sex with Jason anymore and she agreed again that he could come. So he came over and we started talking like adults. There was no screaming and there wasn't even so much as a name call between the two of us. He told me then that I could tell him the truth about kissing Alex and I told him for the MILLIONTH time that I didn't kiss Alex. He didn't believe me so that's when the screaming started. I told him to get out because I was tired and sick of listening to him bitch at me for one night. I followed him to the door so I could lock it behind him and I called him an asshole. He grabbed me by my arms and slammed me against the wall. I slapped him in his face and he slammed me into the wall again. He told me he'd kill me if I ever put my hands on him again and I pushed him off me and told him that it's over but he _threw _me against the wall again. Then Steph came in and told him to get off me or she was calling the cops and it was over. I told Steph not to call the cops because it was a mutual fight, you know? I slapped him so hard that I broke skin on his cheek and he bruised up my back. She couldn't call the cops on him without calling the cops on me too, right?

I'm still with Jason, by the way. After he threw me against the wall (he literally picked me up off my feet and threw me…I spent the better half of my night cleaning up glass from a shattered picture frame) he felt all bad. Steph tried to kick him out of the house but he insisted on helping me up because honestly at that point, I couldn't breathe. Have you ever been punched in the back? You know that feeling you get where you can't breathe when you get hit in your back? I had that feeling. I couldn't breathe. He tried to help me up but Steph kept screaming at him and telling him to get out but he went all "Jo I'm sorry I love you I'll kill myself if you leave me" on me and started talking about how he was gonna die without me and… I'm already responsible for a lot of things. I don't really want to be responsible for his death too, you know? So I kind of just… told him to stay away from me for a little while. But we aren't broken up I guess. I just have to find a way to do it without making him all psychotic.

My thoughts about what happened last night are beginning to overwhelm me so before I start to cry, I plop back down on the benches and write my name with my index finger on the wood. I know how to turn things on and off really well. When you're a sixteen/seventeen year old little girl and you have to go to school and act like you're not dying for a hot shower, a hot meal and someone to give a shit about you, you learn how to hide your feelings like an expert. I'm practically a professional at acting like nothing's wrong. I deserve an Oscar Award or something. I scribble out my imaginary name with my finger and start writing it over again.

"Good morning." The chief's…chiefly voice interrupts my invisible writing and I look up to see what he wants. I hope he shows me some mercy and puts me on a good service today. I'm kind of under the impression that every doctor in this place dislikes me because I'm the slut intern that got caught (ALMOST) kissing Karev. I'm not even a full month into my internship and I've already gotten kicked off one service and put on punishment. "Murphy you're in Trauma with me and Kepner today so I hope you're on your A-Game. Ross go up to the CCU…Dr. Yang is waiting for you. Brooks, Dr. Shepherd requested your services so you'll be on Neuro. Wilson, you're with Dr. Torres on Orthopedics today. She has a case up on the Pediatric floor, go find her. DON'T MAKE ME REGRET PAIRING YOU WITH HER."

"I won't, sir." I tie my hair up in a ponytail and stand up. I won't even see Alex on the regular Peds floor today. It's Wednesday which means he's in the NICU all day. That's probably why Dr. Hunt put me on Torres' service knowing that she had a pediatric case because he knows that Alex will be in the NICU and not on the actual Peds floor all day. I don't even think me and Alex are friends anymore. If they were trying to dispel our friendship by banning me from Peds, it worked. I haven't spoken to him in what feels like forever. I'm pretty sure that we aren't friends over something so stupid. We didn't even kiss so I'm not sure what I'm being punished for but I know one thing… I'm a little bit sad. He was my friend…and despite the fact that I kind of like him, I like him as my friend as well and I'm pretty sure I just lost my friend.

And that sucks because aside from Steph, he was the only person I didn't mind letting in. And I have so much to tell him. I have to tell him that I hate Michael Buble. I have to ask him if he enjoyed John Mayer and what he thought about The Breakfast Club. I just miss talking to my friend…

What if I promise not to fall in love with him? Would I be allowed back on Pediatrics then?

**Alex's Point of View.**

I hope I get some good cases today. I don't hope that kids get sick or anything like that, I just hope I get some really good surgical cases today. I'm in a pleasantly good mood and I attribute that to the fact that Iz came back last night and we did some wedding planning before we went to bed. She got back around 8:30 last night and she had a couple ideas that she gathered from her mom while she was away in Chehalis. I honestly don't think that going away to Chehalis every time we fight is beneficial to our relationship as a whole but I do notice that whenever she comes back, she's always pleasant and really easy to deal with. I'm in a good mood because my baby actually came back and I slept well last night as well.

I didn't want her to come back to work today and hear falsified rumors about the stuff that went on between Jo and me while she was away so after she got out the shower last night, we sat down and watched TV and I told her all about it. I told her about how Jo and I have so much in common and how we're becoming really good friends. I told her that we spent a good chunk of our day on Saturday just talking and bullshitting with each other. I told her that I was thinking that maybe Jo could come to our wedding because she really is like my alternative Meredith/Cristina. She told me that she didn't care if Jo comes to the wedding and she said she wants to meet her because she sounds really great.

The thing I like the most about Iz is that she really trusts me. For the first time in my life, I have somebody that actually, genuinely, truly trusts me. I told her straight up that she might come back to work and hear rumors that I was kissing interns in the tunnels but I swore to her that it wasn't true and she believed me. Just like that. She told me that she trusts that I wouldn't cheat on her because despite the fact that I can be an asshole, I'm a good man.

So while we were off on the subject of inviting Jo, we actually sat down while we were watching America's Got Talent and made a guest list. So far there's 134 people on the guest list so when we went online and custom made the invitations last night, Iz just went ahead and ordered 250 of them. 250 is our limit of people that are going to get actual invitations and if we run out, we can always invite more people by word of mouth. The invitations weren't cheap by any means. I'm talking 250 of them cost me $331.65 plus shipping and handling, so to save on invitations, Izzie's just gonna take one and put it on the bulletin board up in Dermatology as an invite to all of her coworkers. They cost so much because I went ahead and let Izzie go all out with designing them. They're all white with bright red lace trim. The letters of the words are multicolored and they're all hand-written by a calligraphist. The envelopes that went along with them are all white silk with multicolored chrysanthemums embroidered on the front. It made Iz happy so it made me happy as well. The only thing is that we're going to have to hand-deliver them to the people we see every day because I only paid extra to have addresses printed on 50 of the envelopes.

Now that the invitations and the guest list are all done, the next goal is to have a song picked out by the end of the week. You know how at the reception there's usually a song that the bride and groom share their first dance to? We still have yet to pick one out. Iz told me that she wants me to pick the song because she feels like she's not including me in on enough of the planning. I tried to explain to her that I'm NOT good with mushy, love-dovey songs but she insisted so I think I might get my old buddy Jo to help me out with that. Because lord knows that Mere knows nothing about love songs and neither does Cristina. For god's sake, Mere got married on a Post-It! sticky note and Cristina's first wedding ended with her being cut out of a dress and her second one was in a house. Jo has decent taste in music and she's a chick so she knows what a chick would want to have as a wedding song.

Speaking of Jo, I told myself that I was going to give this a week to blow over before I started to talk to her again, but I don't think I can do that. It's been four days since she's been kicked off Peds which means it's been three full days since I've even spoken to her and four days since the almost kiss. I'm missing her company because I like her or anything of that nature. I'm missing her company because aside from Mere, Cristina and Avery, she's the only person in this damn hospital I can talk to. I miss her friendship. So even though it's only been four days and she's STILL banned from Peds, I think I'm going to talk to her today and let her know that I need her help with music.

I don't want her to feel like we're not friends anymore and I want to know exactly how she feels about everything. Plus, since I've gone three full days without speaking to her, I haven't gotten the opportunity to apologize for getting her kicked off Peds. Oh yeah, and I have to let her know that I listened to that artist she suggested and the dude wasn't half bad and she's invited to my wedding. I don't care if I get in trouble for talking to her. She's my friend and I don't think anybody should be able to tell me who I can and cannot be friends with. I wonder if she'd be okay with meeting Iz today.

"Alex!" I turn my head to see who called me and see that it's nobody but Mere. I stop walking out of courtesy and wait for her to catch up. "Did Izzie come back yesterday?" She asks. I was about to go find out what service Jo was on and see if she had a free minute to chat with me, but I guess I'll just talk to her at lunch since I'm being sidetracked by Mere. Maybe Jo and Iz can meet today at lunch. Iz would just have to take a late lunch. Being that Iz works up on Derm, she's on a different schedule than us and her lunch is earlier than ours.

We all used to joke about how easy Dermatology was. In fact, anytime me, Mere, Cristina, George and Iz needed a minute to cool down when we were interns, we would go slum it upstairs in Dermatology because it was so peaceful, calm and easy. I swear Iz is still cut out to be a surgeon. I swear if she really wanted to, she could come down here and kick all of our asses as a surgical resident. But ever since she went to see the dermatologist that diagnosed her cancer and saved her life, she wanted to pursue a career in Dermatology. She's happy up there now and as long as she's happy, I'm happy.

"Yeah…She got back last night." I throw my empty coffee thermos away and wipe my mouth with the back of my hand. "We did wedding planning. Guest list and invitations are out of the way, finally."

"That's good. Does she know about Wilson?"

"There's nothing for her to know." I shrug. "She knows that me and Jo are friends and she doesn't care."

"Alright… just making sure."

**Jo's Point of View.**

"You really think you can come up with a way to get the cancer out without cutting off the leg?" I peer over Dr. Torres' shoulder as she's looking at MRI scans. Did I mention how amazing she is? We've been working on Pediatric cases all day and she's so gentle with the kids but forceful enough to deal with bones. She's amazing. So far, there was a ten year old with a broken tibia that she had to set and cast up, a four year old with a shattered ankle bone that she actually let me scrub in on, a thirteen year old with a severed finger that she reattached and now we're looking at a sixteen year old with osteosarcoma. I've literally been buddying around all day with her and I think I like Ortho more than Peds…maybe. My day so far has been… wow.

Not to mention, I don't think that Dr. Robbins completely hates me. Okay so, I didn't know that she and Dr. Torres were married…with a baby. I didn't know that at all. I was surprised when I came to find her on the Peds floor this morning after I was given my assignment. She and Dr. Robbins were busy chatting away about which one of them was going to pick their daughter up from daycare tonight and get this… Dr. Robbins SMILED at me and said hello. Maybe this means I'll be allowed back on Pediatrics someday. But if I'm never allowed back on Peds…I think I'd be okay as long as I can be on Orthopedics.

"That's the goal. I think I can go in and resect this tumor here…" She points to a mass on the screen that I can't see but she can. She's just that amazing. "Take it out and that'll allow me better view of the main tumor… but there's arteries wrapped around—see that?" She points at two blue lines. I nod my head. "So you see, if I take out the little one that'll free up all that space and I can go in and take all that outta there… and a nerve graft would go ahead and allow him to retain use of the limb… you see that? I just can't figure out a plane to dissect on this tumor because all the blood flow is right there…"

"What if you…" I scratch my head and let my voice trail off. I'm not supposed to give suggestions. I learned that in med school. Never tell a doctor how to do his or her job, even if you think you know what to do. Don't speak unless you're spoken to as an intern.

"Go 'head Wilson… what are you suggesting?" She steps aside so I can get better views at the MRI scans. "You have an idea…you should say it. You told me you like Ortho, didn't you?" I feebly nod my head. "Then you need to toughen up and stop being a wimp. If you have an idea that you think might help the patient, SPEAK up. The worst I can tell you is 'no, your idea is stupid'. You have a suggestion?"

"…Yeah, I was gonna say…" I point at the big tumor. "If you use a mid-plane dissection… wouldn't that allow the blood flow to go elsewhere? If you use a mid-plane dissection from the start, you might not have to go in and resect the tiny tumor…you can go in and clean out the bigger one and use other methods to shrink the smaller met… because the smaller met is stuck to the bone, you might not want to cut it off because he might lose function… or…" I bite my lip. "It's a much more aggressive approach, but… the kid's leg is already full of cancer so why not be aggressive right?"

"…I like the way you think, Wilson. I really like the way you think." She bites her lip as she stares at the scans, presumably thinking about what I just said. "I was trying to be minimally evasive… but I think your approach just might work in this case." She shuts off the scans and puts her chart in the pocket of her white coat. "Good work here. Go to lunch and meet me back here at…" She looks down at her watch. "Meet me back here at 1:15 so we can go over your plan again…and make sure you spend some time in the Skills Lab before tomorrow morning because I'm gonna need somebody to dissect the tumor if this works."

"…You're gonna…" _Is she SERIOUS? _"You're gonna let me dissect the plane?"

"Say 'Thank you Dr. Torres, I'm going to go eat lunch now.' Alright?"

"…T…Thank you, Dr. Torres. I'm going to go eat lunch now."

**X X X **

_Smaller cuts, Jo… Smaller… don't… don't. _I put down my plastic scalpel and sigh. I should just tell Dr. Torres to dissect the plane herself. I'm going to screw this up. I'm trying to get nice, even lines and I can't. I've been at this for half an hour and I've only got fifteen more minutes to perfect this before I have to go back to Dr. Torres to finish up for the day. I can always stay after my shift's over to get some extra practice but I have to go home. My shift's over at 7:30 tonight and I have to go to bed early tonight because our surgery is first thing tomorrow morning. I really want to dissect this plane but I also don't want to kill the poor kid all because Torres let a stupid little intern be the one to do the dissections. I have to do the dissection straight down the middle because there are vessels and arteries and nerves all tangled around the tumor and if I go off track even an INCH, this kid loses function of his leg, bleeds out and dies or has to have an amputation…all because I can't dissect in a straight line.

I pick the scalpel back up and try again on the green cup of Jell-O I stole from the cafeteria. I had to get creative, so I stuck a couple toothpicks inside the Jell-O to act like nerves and vessels and arteries. If I puncture a toothpick then I've just killed the kid I'm operating on tomorrow. As soon as I dig the scalpel inside the Jell-O, the door to the Skills Lab opens up. I look up to see who's interrupting me and all of a sudden, my fingers turn to mush and the scalpel falls out of my hand. My shoulders tense up, my stomach gets all fuzzy and warm and I feel like I can't breathe. I might throw up all over this table…but it's a pleasant feeling. I can't move and I feel like there are little fishies swimming around in my tummy.

"Torres said I might find you in here." He strides over to the table I'm at with a bag of barbecue potato chips in tow. "Whatcha doing?" He rests his elbows against the table and leans over it. _Does this mean we're still friends? I haven't talked to you in forever but you came to find me. Are we friends? I missed you… _"And why have you butchered perfectly good Jell-O?"

As if we're picking up where we left off days ago, I crack a smile and giggle. "I'm practicing." I tuck a piece of my bangs behind my ear and keep smiling at him. _Stop smiling like an idiot. _I can't… I always smile when he's around. "Torres is letting me dissect a tumor plane tomorrow morning and I'm failing miserably. I'm going to either kill the kid, paralyze him or make him an amputee if I don't get this right." He turns his bag of chips towards me and I take one. "Is there something you want, while you're sneaking and talking to me?"

"I wanted to talk to you." He shoves a chip in his mouth and chews obnoxiously. "I think the whole punishment thing is over, by the way. So I don't think this qualifies as sneaking if it's not forbidden anymore." He swallows his chip and grins. "So what's been up with you? Mooching any surgeries off anybody with your tears lately?"

I giggle again. "No…" I take another chip out of his bag. "…I didn't know we were still friends." I admit. "I kinda felt like you were avoiding me or maybe you didn't want to talk to me anymore because of what happened…."

"Nah, I've just been busy." He hands me the bag of chips and dusts his hands off on the seat of his scrub pants. "So I checked out The Breakfast Club… it wasn't half bad for an 80s movie."

"So you liked it?"

"I wouldn't say I liked it. I just didn't feel like I completely wasted my time with it. Not something I'd consider my favorite movie, but not something I'd turn off if it came on cable…get it?" I nod my head as my mouth is full of chip. "And I checked out John Mayer. He's not bad either. Took me a while to get into him but once I did, I liked it. I put a couple of his songs on my jogging playlist."

"I hated Michael Buble. I like that 'Haven't Met You Yet' song but other than that…ehh." _We can't keep ignoring the fact that we almost kissed. And I'm pretty sure there's mutual attraction between us. I'm sure he wanted to kiss me just as much as I wanted to kiss him… maybe we should just talk about it. _"So about the—"

He starts to talk at the same time I start to talk so I just let him talk before me. "My fiancé says she wants to meet you." He says that so casually and excitedly. I mouth the word "oh" and look around the room to avoid eye contact. _Awkward… _"I told her all about my little buddy Jo and she's excited to meet you. I told her if she finds me funny then she'd find you hilarious." _You're buddy? Oh… _"And she said you can come to the wedding if you want." _I just don't know what to say... _"I hope you're able to come, dude. I don't have many friends to invite that are just strictly my friends and not Izzie's friends because we're both friends with a lot of the same people…but she's inviting all her friends from up on Derm and now I'm inviting you."

My stomach hurts. I feel like someone just shot a cannon clean through my gut. And my throat is aching with that feeling you get right before you're about to cry. _I've got this all wrong… How could I be so stupid to think that someone like him could want someone like… me? I was kidding myself. _"That's great." I lick my lips. "I would totally love to come… I'll make sure I'm not working that day and I'll just… I'll totally come. I'll bring a gift and all that…" I give him a fake smile. "What… um… color? What color should I wear? I'm so… I'm so excited for you, Alex." _He needs to leave because I need to cry._

"Wear whatever you want, it doesn't matter." He seems really excited for the idea of the wedding. "So you're really gonna come? I know how you feel about weddings and I don't want you to feel obligated to come… but if you do come, that'll mean a lot to me, dude. Even if you just come to the reception to drink and have a good time. It's not for a couple months so you've got time to mentally prepare yourself for the idea of a wedding." He's smiling and I'm smiling but the difference is that his smile is genuine and mine is so faked that it hurts. "Who knows? Maybe you'll see me up there sayin' my vows and crap and you'll decide to give Peckwell a chance at marrying you. Maybe you'll catch the wedding bug."

"Yeah…maybe." _Am I really this stupid? I went to TWO Ivy League schools. Not one, but TWO. How am I this stupid? How do I not get this? People like Alex don't like people like me. People like me don't get to be with people like him. People like him get… blondes. People like him get blondes with big boobs, that can cook, that can bake, that want to marry him, that want to have his babies. People like him get smart, kind, intelligent beautiful girls. Not people like me. Not people that are brunette with an average body. Someone that's not the greatest cook in the world, someone that doesn't want to get married, someone that doesn't want babies? People like that…they get Jasons. _

"Oh, and I need your help with something…" He begins again. I raise my eyebrows up to let him know I'm listening. "I'm supposed to pick out our song. The song that we're gonna share our first dance to. I'm supposed to pick that out but I don't know any good love songs. Can you help me out with that?"

"…Mhm."

"You're the shit, Jo." He bawls his hand up to a fist and holds it to me. I reluctantly bawl my fist up to and put it against his. After we "pound it out", he turns to leave me alone in the lab again. "…Oh, and what were you gonna say earlier?" He stops walking and turns back around to look at me. "I cut you off before I started telling you about how Izzie wanting to meet you. Sorry about that, but if I didn't say it then, I would've forgot. What were you gonna say though?"

_I was gonna ask you how you felt about the almost kiss…but I kinda get the picture. _"I was just…" I look down at my Jell-O and toothpicks. "I was gonna ask you if you could help me out with dissecting the plane, but I think I get it now." _I was gonna ask you about the kiss, I was gonna ask you what we should do about our feelings for each other… but I'm wrong here. And I'm so sorry that I'm wrong. _"Um… I guess I'll see you later."


	12. Chapter 12

"All I'm asking is for you to come out with me. Let me treat you to dinner and a movie and we can do this right. I'm being reasonable, I think." Using his thumb, he's tracing the beds of my nails softly like he actually appreciates me. He looks over at me for a split second then puts his eyes back on the road. "Dinner and a movie babe…that's all." He holds my hand and brings it up to his mouth where he kisses my knuckles. "Then we can go back to my place and do the grown people thing…the right way…in a bed." He's kissing each and every one of my fingers. "I love you…"

I really wish he'd stop saying that. I really wish that he would shut up with that and stop saying that to me because he's not doing anything but confusing me. "…I have somewhere to be early tomorrow morning… And I thought we agreed that we're taking a break." I slide my hand out of his grasp and look out the window. I really need to figure out how to do this and how to do it quick. I'm so confused. One minute he's calling me a slut and a liar and throwing me into walls…then the next minute he's all nice and gentlemanlike trying to take me on dates. "I can't go out with you…not tonight."

"You have somewhere to be tomorrow morning?" The tone of his voice is going up a couple pitches which is a direct indication that things have the potential to get ugly here. He rounds the bend in the road and pulls into the driveway to me and Steph's apartment. "How early tomorrow morning? Why didn't you tell me?" He throws the gearshift in park and locks the car doors so I can't get out. "…Are you going somewhere with that punk?"

"No." I grab my purse off the floor in front of me and put my hand on the door handle. "Dr. Torres is letting me scrub in on her surgery tomorrow morning because she's letting me dissect the plane… I have to be at the hospital by 5:30 tomorrow morning so I can spend a little bit of extra time in the Skills Lab. So I'm going inside, taking a shower, eating and going to bed." I unlock my door and begin to pull the handle, but before I can get out, he re-locks the door on me. "Jason…"

"If you're gonna lie, you could at least try to make sure it's a good lie." His hands are gripping the steering wheel so tight that his veins and muscles are flexed and his knuckles are prominent.

"What am I lying about now?" I throw my hands up in the air and sigh. I can't win with him. "I've told you the truth. I have a surgery really early tomorrow morning and I'm already exhausted from today… I really just want to take a shower and lie down for the night. I didn't lie to you about that…"

"You work every other day, Jo! Stop lying to me, you bitch. You work every other day and you worked today which means YOU'RE OFF tomorrow. If you want to blow me off just say so!" I open my mouth to say something but he just keeps going on and on and on. Normally, I'd cuss him back out for calling me a bitch and a lair and stuff but I just don't have the energy to do it tonight. Physically, my back hurts. I think my injuries from last night are really starting to set in because my back is stiff and it hurts when I move my arms. Mentally, I'm drained. I loved working on Orthopedics today with Dr. Torres but I had to think more than I've thought since I've started my internship today. And emotionally? I'm beaten. It takes a lot of emotional energy to deal with someone like Alex. Someone that makes me so sad but still I want to be around him all the time? Yeah, I'm drained from dealing with him today. I just don't have it in me to fight with him tonight. I want to go to sleep. "You're not getting out of this car until you tell me the truth…" He looks at me with accusing eyes.

"I _am _telling you the truth." I rub the corners of my eyes and yawn. "I'm supposed to be off tomorrow but I helped Torres come up with a treatment plan for this kid with osteosarcoma in his leg today, so she's rewarding me by letting me scrub in and dissect the tumor's plane tomorrow morning… I'm not lying. You can call the hospital and ask her if you want…" I put my hand on the handle again. "Please let me go now? I'm so tired…"

"Why didn't you tell her no? Why didn't you tell her that you wanted to keep your day off?" He turns his body completely in his driver's seat so that he's totally facing me. I look down at the floor. I'm so drained. I don't feel like arguing even though he's basically trying to force me into arguing back. "Huh?" He reaches over with his right hand and smacks me in my face, not hard but enough to irritate me. It wasn't really a smack as much as it was a pop. "Why didn't you say no?" Again, he smacks me…harder this time. "You could've said no, couldn't you have?" He smacks me in my mouth this time around. "Answer me, Jo…" I still don't say anything which makes him smack me in the mouth again.

This time, I swat his hand away. "Quiddit." He raises his hand to slap me once more but I swat it away again. "I'm a SURGICAL intern… I'm gonna be a surgeon someday. Why would I say no to the opportunity to get to cut someone open? If that's what I'm training to do?" I sigh. "Besides… I'm an intern. I can't say no to anybody that orders me to do something. If Torres told me to lick the floor, I'd go lick the floor."

"Just like if Karev told you to fuck him in an on-call room, you would." He's biting his lip pretty hard. "Get out of my car, Jo. Get out."

"Unlock the fuckin' door and I will." I snap at him purely out of irritation. I'm irritated that he's calling me a liar and I'm SO irritated that he felt the need to smack me in my mouth five different times…like I'm his kid or something. "And you're not gonna keep calling me a slut. I swear to god you're not. I'm not easy and I'm not a whore so stop it with the slut-shaming."

"It was pretty easy for me to get in those pants of yours." He slides his hand across the seat at me and rests his palm on my kneecap. "Took me what… half an hour or something?" He makes his fingers climb to the button of my jeans and his hand rests flat between my legs. "Wasn't this all I had to do?"

I push his hands away from me and mumble underneath my breath. "Worst mistake of my life…" I wriggle my hips to get his hand from between my legs. "Get off of me… I'm not even kidding." With one movement, he unbuckles his seatbelt and crawls across the seat at me. "Jason, I'm serious… we're not doing this anymore… we're not doing this."

"Why do you always gotta act so tough?" Like I asked him to, he takes his hands from between my legs and wraps them around my body like he's giving me a hug. He buries his face in my neck and starts kissing me. "I love you…" I roll my eyes to the back of my head and sigh. "You hear me?" He mumbles into my neck and I nod. He squeezes my body and plants a soft kiss right below my earlobe. "Do you love me too?" He asks and I remain dead silent and dead still. I'm not gonna tell him that I love him when I clearly don't. "Say it…" I still stay quiet, just letting him hug me. "Do you love me?" I whisper a "no" so low and softly that he shouldn't have been able to hear it…but he did. "No?!" He stops touching me, stops hugging me and pulls away. "No?"

"….I…." I look up at the apartment that I'm desperately dying to get out of this car and get into. "…I could learn." _That's a bold-face lie right there. I could never learn to love him but it sounds good and I need him to let me out of his car before he drives off with me in it and takes me back to his house and does god-knows-what with me. _"I'm just saying that we haven't really… gotten to know each other that well yet and I don't want to lie and say that I love you when I don't love you yet… and…" Like it's happening in slow motion, I watch him bawl his hand up in a fist, draw his arm way back and thrust it forward, connecting with the tiny spot between my upper lip and my nose. _Did he really just hit me in my face? _I bring my hand up to my face and hold it…

He must've hit me pretty hard because my hair flew all over the place and now it's sticking to the blood that's gushing…GUSHING out of my nose. I just don't say anything to him because I don't have anything else to say. I've never been hit in the face by a man before… I've been held down and forced into sex, I've been slammed against a wall, I've had my ass grabbed, I've had my arm squeezed… but never have I been hit in the face by a man. He draws his fist back like he's gonna do it again and I flinch away but he connects with my shoulder with this punch. "Why do you insist on making me hit you?! You know what…" He lunges across my body and opens up my door. "Get out. You always make me hit you! You think I like hitting you?! You MAKE me hit you! You take me to that point! Get out!" He starts pushing me out the door. "You don't wanna go?!" I can't move. I think I'm in shock… he hit me in my face…. He slams the door back shut. "Do you like it when I hit you?! I think you like pissing me off! And now you're gonna TRY to end this, aren't you? Don't forget that if I can't have you then nobody else can."

"…I…." My voice is ravaged with tears and it's shaking and I can't form a sentence. I'm…scared? Mortified, even. He just punched me in my face… "I should go…" I whisper in a daze. I unlock the door and pull on the handle and this time, he lets me go free. I take my hand away from my face and see that it's full of blood. I slide my purse up on my shoulder and walk away from the car. I grab onto the railing that leads up the small flight of steps and stumble a little bit. _He really just punched me like that? I didn't even see it coming. I don't know why I'm surprised that he would hit me, he already threw me against the wall. But I'm in so much shock that I couldn't even hit him back. Did I… did I really make him do that?_

In a complete and utter haze, I open up the door to the apartment and walk right in, shutting it and locking it behind myself. I drop my purse on the floor next to the door and walk through the hallway, towards the living room. Steph's in the living room watching TV I think, because the light is on and I can hear the TV. I go into the living room and stand by the doorway, resting my head against the wall. She looks the same as she did when I left her this morning. She's lying on the couch with a bucket next to her head and blankets pulled up to her chin. How exactly do you tell your best friend that your boyfriend just punched you in your face?

She's looking at her phone but somehow she can tell that I'm standing there without actually looking up at me. "Hey Jo, how was…" Her voice trails off the second she puts her phone down. "…Oh my god." She throws her blankets off her and stands up really fast. All I do is blink once and the tears finally start to fall. I'm proud of myself that I'm JUST how starting to cry. I mean, I thought for sure I'd be crying the second he did it. "Oh my…" She seems like she's in just as much shock as I'm in. Slowly, I walk over to her and she immediately puts her hand on my cheek. "…This is exactly why I said that I was gonna pick you up! I knew…"

I sit down on the couch and finally take the time to feel out my newest injury. My mouth hurts. My nose doesn't hurt…just my mouth. Steph lifts her shirt up over her head and takes it off. She bawls it up and presses it against my face. "What the hell happened?!" She lifts my head up by my chin and keeps dabbing the shirt all over the blood. "I'm calling the cops…screw this."

"No Steph…don't." I shake my head and hold the shirt on my face when she lets it go. "All he's gonna do is tell them that I hit him too and then I'll be in trouble. Steph, I can't get in trouble again… I can't. I'll lose my job, I'll lose everything… don't." I tilt my head back and pinch my sore nose. "Don't call the police."

"Look at your face! He hit you…" She combs my sweaty hair out of the way and slowly peels the shirt away. "He busted your lip wide open and made your nose bleed." She's crying herself which I find…odd. "Please break up with him… please." She brushes her thumb across the sorest spot on my lip. "Jo, you have to end this with him. Please end it… I'm begging you. End it right now. I'll do it… gimme your phone."

"I can't just break up with him." I catch a drop of blood trickling out of my nose with her t-shirt. "I can't… I have to find another way to do it. He… he said he's gonna kill himself if I break up with him Steph and I can't be responsible for that. I can't be responsible for him killing himself…" I sniff and wipe my tears with my hands. "And then he said if he can't have me then nobody else can… that scares me, Steph. What if he's THAT crazy? He's gonna kill me or himself…"

"You're damn right he's gonna kill you!" She takes the bloodied t-shirt off me and throws it to the ground. She grabs me by my shoulders and forces my face into her stomach while she's hugging me. She's standing up and I'm sitting down…and I feel bad because my face is still bleeding and she's wearing a white tank-top. "Either way he's gonna kill you. He's gonna kill you if you do break up with him, he's gonna kill you if you don't. He's gonna kill you, Jo… and I can't sit here and watch. You're my best friend… I don't wanna lose my best friend… and you're gonna make me swear not to tell the cops but Jo, I'm not gonna sit here and watch him while he kills you. Yesterday it was a throw up against the wall…today it was a punch in the face. What if tomorrow he pulls a gun on you? Please… don't make me lose my best friend."

"I'm gonna break up with him…I just don't know how." I grit my teeth. "…I'm pissed, Steph. I'm pissed." My leg starts to shake. "I want to hit him back… I swear to god I want to kill him. I didn't even get the chance to hit him back. I was just in shock about what he did and now… I want to KILL him."

"Then break it off with him! I'm not kidding Jo… either you break up with him or I'm gonna do it."

"I'm gonna do it eventually."

"Do me a favor and don't wait until you're in your grave to do it."

**X X X **

"So aside from asshole, how was your day?"

"It was great, actually." I twirl my fork in a pile of spaghetti noodles and shove it in my mouth. Tomorrow's my turn to cook dinner and I was going to make spaghetti but Steph took my idea. So maybe tomorrow I'll throw some macaroni and cheese in the oven for us since I can't really cook too many things. I have to eat a certain way to avoid my top lip burning where he busted it open. "I was on Orthopedics all day and it was awesome. Dr. Torres is amaze-balls. She let me help her come up with a treatment for a kid with osteosarcoma and she's letting me dissect the plane tomorrow morning. My day was awesome. How about yours?"

"Wait, you're doing a plane dissection tomorrow?!" She swats me softly with the couch pillow. "You bitch! I would kill to cut!" She laughs and takes a heaping bite of spaghetti from her own plate. "But my day was so boring. I sat here and watched Jerry Springer and the Maury show for hours straight. I didn't know there were so many transsexuals in secret relationships and hoes that don't know their baby-daddy in this world. Some girls just shouldn't have children if they're sleeping with that many damn men. Just get an abortion or something."

"That's one way to settle it." I shrug and take a bite outta my garlic bread.

"…Do you believe in that stuff?" She puts her plate down on the coffee table and takes a sip of her drink. "You know how you don't want to get married and you don't want kids?" I nod my head. "What if you got pregnant? Would you abort it or would you just give it up for adoption? Since you don't want them, I mean."

"…Well first of all, I DON'T want kids and I realized that I didn't want kids when I was like twenty…so I went and got the Mirena. I can't get pregnant for five years and when that five years is up, I'm just gonna get another one put in. I'm smart enough to get birth control, because even though I'm pro-choice, I don't believe that abortion is birth control. I hate the ones that KNOW that they don't want to have kids any time soon but figure if they get pregnant that they'll just kill the baby. No, get on birth control you lazy bitch and stop acting like abortion is birth control because it's not." I roll my eyes and put my plate down too. "So yeah, as a doctor, I believe that all women have the right to choose but for me? I wouldn't. I'm pro-choice but it's not something that I would choose for myself. And I wouldn't give it up for adoption either because I don't want my kid to think I abandoned it."

"So then what? Since you wouldn't put it up for adoption and you wouldn't abort it, you'd just have a baby that you'd resent?"

"That's the thing. I wouldn't end up pregnant. In this day and age, there are WAY too many contraceptives for bitches to end up pregnant. Condoms, pills, shots, IUDs, implants…there are WAY too many options these days for there to be unplanned, unwanted pregnancies." I pick up my drink and hold it to my lips but finish off my topic before I sip it. "But if by chance I did wind up pregnant, I would keep it. There's no sense in punishing a baby for something that I did. I wouldn't want it, but I wouldn't resent it either. I'm not heartless, Steph. I'd love my baby boy or my baby girl if I had one. But I don't want one and I'm not gonna have one. I'm on that good five-year plan with the Mirena."

"I feel you on that." She nods. "I got that implant thing in my arm. I started off with the pill but I got really bad with it and I had two pregnancy scares because I wasn't taking my pill right so I was just like screw it, gimme the implant. I want kids though. When I settle down and when the time is right, I want four kids. Two girls and two boys hopefully."

"That's WAY too many goddamned kids." I shake my head slowly at her. "I mean… Aunt Jo will babysit whenever you need her to, but not all at once. Aunt Jo would kill herself if she had to watch all four of your bad ass kids at one time."

"If you're willing to babysit, why not just have your own? Your soul is black. You love to work on Pediatrics but you don't want kids?"

"Nope. Kids are a hassle. They scream, they cry, they whine, they yell, they puke, they shit, they piss and they're always leaking some kind of bodily fluid. I'm not a snot-rag and I'm not a professional shit-cleaner. Babies are gross. Cute, but gross. Plus, I'd be a horrible mom. I just can't really imagine someone calling me 'Mommy'. Nah."

"But your kids would be so cute! Imagine if you married a sexy light-skinned man… your baby would have pretty hair and pretty eyes… and a pretty skin color. Just think about your pretty babies…"

"Steph, I don't want children." I bite my lip because this conversation goes deeper than she'll ever know. "I just can't see myself raising my baby in a world like this. People are horrible and what if…" I sigh. "I can't protect my kid from everything in this world. What if my baby had to go into foster care? What if my baby got a bastard foster dad that rapes them out of their virginity? Just what if, you know? You can't protect your kids from everything and if I was ever somebody's mother… I would feel like shit knowing that my kid could be exposed to the shit I was exposed to. That's not… right. I don't want to bring a baby into the world knowing all of that uncertainty. I don't want kids. I feel like babies deserve to have parents that are gonna be the BEST parents to them. They should have parents that want them, that will take off work to teach them to ride a bike, that will pack their lunches on the first day of kindergarten… that's not me. So I'd rather just not have them. And I really, highly doubt that I'll ever change my mind about wanting babies…"

"So you're telling me that if you got pregnant right now… you would keep it?"

"…Nah, I'd probably take the bridge. And I'm not even joking. I'm taking the bridge."

"You're horrible! You never need to get married to a man that wants kids…"

"Speaking of marriage…" I want to change this conversation and this seems like the perfect opportunity to do so. "I got invited to Alex's wedding."

"…No you didn't."

"I did." I poke my lip out. "And he was all… 'No pressure, but I would love it if you came, BUDDY.' Buddy…Buddy, STEPH. BUDDY."

"…Well Jo, you knew he was engaged when you went all batshit crazy and goo-goo eyed over him."

"Yeah… but I forgot. It was like… we were talking and I just forgot for a minute. And I'm so stupid because I thought that hey… the almost kiss could mean something. But it didn't. He's all crazy over his fiancé. He wants me to meet her…"

"And did you tell him no?!"

"No! I couldn't tell him no… if I told him no, then that would just flat-out tell him that I have some feelings for him. Can you imagine him telling me that he wants me to meet his fiancé and then me telling him no? That alone would tell him that I'm feeling some kind of way for him."

"…You're in love with Karev, aren't you?"

"I'm not in love with him. I'm not. I just…" I sigh. I've never been very good with dishing out my feelings. I can never tell anybody how I feel about them without clamming up because I DON'T open up to many people. I can't express my feelings very well. "I feel like he's it. You know? I feel like… like when I see him, I melt. And I forget about everything because nothing else matters when it's me and him talking. I don't feel like I have to hide. I don't feel like I have to try and make myself appear to be ladylike. I don't have to doll myself up in makeup around him because he sees me. And he's my friend…and it's natural to be myself around him. No other guy has ever made me feel like this, Steph. I'm not in love with him, but I feel like I'm supposed to be. I feel like he's the one that god wants me to be with. I don't think I'd be feeling like I'm gonna throw up around him if it wasn't something special. And I swear I thought he felt the same way because… the feeling I get when I'm with him isn't something that only I should be feeling. It's something…electric. Like we're on the same current." I'm going to cry if I don't stop. "And today… I wanted to ask him if he felt like that. If he felt like we were on the same current. I wanted to know if he felt that way too…but he started talking about his wedding and his marriage and I got the picture."

"…You fall way too hard, way too fast."

"But it's NOT like all those other times. It's not like when I slept with Professor Gaines. It's not like me sleeping with Jason on our second date. It's not like that. It's not like that at all. I don't… I don't want to hop in the bed with Alex. I don't want to sleep with him. It's more like… like I feel like I can love him. He's different. I don't love him and I'm not in love with him. I'm not. But I feel like I could be. I could be in love with him and I could see myself annoying him for the rest of my life. I wouldn't get tired of busting his balls and I wouldn't get tired of listening to him tease me. I could see that being our forever…. But he doesn't see it."

"So maybe he's not your forever. Maybe you're just backwards with it. Maybe you think it's him but it's not."

"I can't ignore this though. I'm scared to death that he's gonna married and we're gonna spend the rest of our lives being friends and I'll spend the rest of my life falling for him." I look down at the couch cushions. "Nevermind."

"I get what you're saying Jo… I get it. You're saying that he's your…. It. Your… your ultimate. It's—"

"…Please stop quoting Freaky Friday, Stephanie. This is serious."

"I'm just saying… that's kind of the vibe I'm getting from you."

"…And this is why I don't open up to anybody."

**Alex's Point of View.**

"Hey loser." She doesn't look like she's in the mood, so rather than ruffle her hair like I was going to when I approached her, I just tap her in the shoulder. "Wake up on the wrong side of the bed or something?" _Wait, she had a surgery with Torres… That's right. _"…Did your surgery go badly?" Even though I can tell that she's not in a good mood, I am. I'm in a great mood for the second day in a row. Yesterday it was because Izzie and I got some hardcore wedding planning done and today I'm in a good mood because…well…it's none of your business what my fiancé and I did in the shower this morning. Regardless of the fact that I'm in a great mood because I got laid this morning, it's pretty apparent that Jo's in a shitty mood.

She runs her hands through her long, silky brunette hair and stretches out her neck. "The surgery went well… I didn't mess up." I don't know how she would react if I were to ask her about it, but I do notice she has a blemish on her usually perfect face. Around the edge of her nose is a little bit purple like it's bruised and on her upper lip, it's red like she smeared her lipstick or something. Some girls freak out when guys point out things like pimples or unsightly things on their faces, but this isn't a pimple so I wonder if she'd mind if I asked. It looks like someone hit her in her mouth. "Do you have anything for me to do up on Peds? I'm supposed to ask everyone if they have any scut for me to do since I'm the only intern working today."

"…I could probably find you some scut to do up in the NICU if you give me a minute." I stop walking so she'll take the hint and stop walking too. "What happened to your lip? Did you bite it?"

"….Yeah…kind of." She shrugs. "So gimme the scut…"

"If you'd slow down for a minute." I hold my hand out at her. "I was gonna see if you want to come down to the cafeteria and have lunch with me and my fiancé…since she wants to meet you."

"Oh… right." She yawns. "She wants to meet me today?"

"Well yeah… but if you're busy…"

"No, today's fine… I love today."

"Alright, then come on." I start walking again in the direction of the cafeteria. "Yeah, and about your lip… did you rinse your mouth out with salt-water when you bit it? It could get infected if you didn't…"

"I'm a doctor, Alex… I know the proper protocol." She kind of gets smart with me. Maybe she's PMSing. Something's wrong with her because Jo never acts like this. She's usually so bright and bubbly. Maybe meeting Izzie today is a bad decision. She looks up at me. "…I didn't bite it, by the way. But I'm guessing you already knew that…"

"I guess I did." I shrug. I knew that the story about her biting her lip was a crock of shit, I just assumed that her lying about it meant that she didn't want to talk about it. But it's virtually impossible for her to bite her top lip in the position that it's split… and plus, a bitten lip doesn't explain why her nose is bruised. "Who'd you pick a fight with, Hobo Jo?"

"Boyfriend." She puts her hands in the pockets of her scrub pants and keeps walking alongside me.

"…Peckwell?" I stop walking dead in my tracks once again to look at her. "He hit you?"

"Yep. But you know…what's it matter to you?" Even though I stopped walking, she didn't. She's a couple steps ahead of me now.

"Dude…you're being weird." I grab her by her arm and pull her back to me. "What do you mean by that? Of course it matters to me… you want me to kick his ass? You're my friend… I don't want any man putting his hands on you…or any girl for that matter. I can't stand women beaters."

"I'm fine, Alex…" She runs her hands through her hair again. "I don't need you to protect me. I'm fine. I'm breaking up with him and I don't need your help…I don't want your help. Leave me alone, okay? I just want to meet your wife so I can get that over with." She says that like she really doesn't want to meet Izzie and that's fine. I'm not forcing her to…but she's my friend and I do want her to meet my wife. I want Iz to see how awesome Jo is. I feel like Iz would love Jo. "I'm just sick of this…" She mumbles.

"…Did I do something to make you hate me?" I cross my arms. "Seriously dude, what's your issue? What are you sick of?"

"Nothing."

"Something…."

"Please just leave me alone, okay? I'm not in a good mood and I'm not in the mood for anything today. Between fighting with Jason and fighting with myself… I'm running low on patience. And you're really not making it any better…" She has the worst attitude today and this is NOT the Jo I'm used to…

"Is there something you want to talk to me about? …Do you have something against meeting my…" _…You gotta be kidding me. You've GOT TO BE KIDDING ME. I'm just gonna ask her straight up. _"What are you, crushing on me? Is that why you're so pissed? You've been in a shitty mood ever since I mentioned my fiancé to you…"

"Oh don't flatter yourself." She rolls her eyes. "No. Am I allowed to not be in a good mood? I'm not into you…" _Well that almost kiss determined that you're telling a lie. I can't believe it took me this long to piece it all together. She almost kissed me and she thinks that it meant something. Dammit. Why do I always get stuck with the crazy, delusional girls? Jo's pretty and all but I've never nor will I ever be into her. _"I'm just in a really bad mood."

"Jo, I'm being serious. Is there something you have to tell me?" I'm trying to be lenient with her but I'm not gonna lie. I'm going to be SO pissed if she admits to having some delusional little crush on me. And I honestly won't talk to her.

"NO ALEX." She groans and pulls onto a clump of her hair out of frustration. "I DON'T like you. I'm so tired of everyone accusing me of that. I don't freaking like you. I'm allowed to have boys that are friends! I don't have ANY feelings for you…so shut up about it and leave me alone about it. I'm not in a good mood and I don't have to be. You'd be in a shitty mood too if your boyfriend was wailing on you last night." She rolls her eyes. "And don't you dare tell anybody."

"…Okay Jo. But you're being weird."

"I'm sorry. I'm just in a really bad mood."


	13. Chapter 13

"Oooh…whatcha doin'?" Cristina leans against my back so she can read over my shoulder. "Anything cool? Staring at a blank piece of paper?" She's chewing obnoxiously in my damn ear on what smells like pretzels. Not that I'm having much luck anyway, but I felt like I was getting a breakthrough and she just blew my concentration. I have until tomorrow morning to give Izzie a song and I'm still lost. I don't know any love songs and the ones I googled last night were so cheesy and just… not me. I could really use Jo's help with the music because she has good taste but she hasn't spoken to me since yesterday afternoon when she freaked out on me over meeting Izzie.

They didn't end up meeting, by the way. After our little squabble, Jo walked away from me and I haven't seen her since. I wish I knew what her problem is but as much as I feel like we're the same person, I can't read her mind. I think she wants to talk to me about the almost kiss but I honestly don't think we have anything to talk about. She screamed at me yesterday when I implied that maybe she had feelings for me so judging by her reaction, I would say that's out of the question. If she doesn't have feelings for me and she doesn't feel differently for me than I feel about her, then I don't know why she clammed up when I mentioned meeting Iz again. Maybe she was just in a bad mood from Peckwell.

"I'm supposed to be coming up with a sappy love song for me and Iz to dance to. I know one of you guys has to have a suggestion." I sit back in my chair and sigh. I'd rather do anything else than pick out some crappy love tune that I have to dance with my newlywed wife to. I'd rather pick out the cake topper or tie ribbons on candleholders. I'd rather do hardcore interior design than pick out a simple song. I'm not good with crap like this.

"I thought you had your little intern friend helping you out with that." Avery sits down across from me and starts poking his fork through a bowl of fruit. Jackson's usually the only one out of all of us that eats a decent breakfast and that's due to April constantly packing his breakfast and his lunches. We used to really bust his balls about how Apes treats him like a four year old, but I actually think it's kind of…cute. I would never willingly admit that I think that it's nice that April makes sure he eats well while he's at work, but I do. I kind of hope Iz does that for me once we're married. It wouldn't make a difference if Iz packed my lunch to me or not because here at the hospital, the food isn't so bad… but it's kind of nice to know that Apes thinks of Jackson like that.

"Yeah well my little intern friend started PMSing yesterday and I haven't talked to her since so now it's all on me." I pick up the pencil and put it against the pad of paper I have sitting in front of me. "Oh come on. I'm the only person in this room that isn't frickin' married. You all went through the wedding thing and none of you people have ONE sappy little love song you can offer?"

"What part of 'I GOT MARRIED ON A POST-IT! NOTE' don't you understand? Sorry Alex, but if that doesn't scream anti-church wedding, big poofy gown to you…I don't know what will." Mere's sitting in the corner of the lounge with her feet up on a table and her nose buried deep in some kind of medical magazine. "Your best bet is Kepner. She's the only one here that could probably help you out."

"Avery, where's your wife?" I slam the pencil back down out of frustration and slide my chair out. "I have until tomorrow morning to think of a damn song and I don't have time. I'm in and out of the NICU today, scrubbing in on a surgery with Robbins… I'm too busy to think of a lousy song." But did I mention that I really care about the song? I know I act like I don't, but I really do. It can't just be any song. It has to be meaningful and it has to actually reflect on the way I feel. I can't just pick some random song talking about being the wind beneath my wings because that's cheesy and not at all heartfelt and I feel like she'd notice if I didn't put any effort into picking a good one.

"She is… down in the pit with Hunt, I believe. But don't go bother finding her because she has an OB/GYN appointment in half an hour so her mind will probably be elsewhere." He says with a mouthful of fruit. I sit back down and put my head down against the table. I'm in a room full of wedding imbeciles. Meredith and Derek got married on a freaking sticky note. No church, no family, no friends, no ceremony. Just a trip down to city hall and vows written on a sticky note. Cristina's first wedding ended with her being left at the altar and cut out of her dress. Her second wedding to Hunt was in the house that is now me and Izzie's house. There were friends and family but that's it. Just a house. Not a church either. And Avery? Well him and Kepner are the LAST people I should be asking about getting married.

The talk about the way those two ran off and got married is just now starting to die down. Did I mention that my friends have a nasty habit of leaving people/getting left at the altar? April left her supposed-to-be-husband at the altar and ran off with Jackson to get married, I shit you not about that. Maybe my friends are the last people I should take advice from. They're all jinxed or something. I stand back up and walk over to the door. "Where are you running off to now, Spawn?" Cristina asks me just before I walk out.

"Dermatology." I mumble and walk straight out. I'm going to go up to Dermatology to see Izzie because I have to ask her a question. She's working the overnight shift tonight because apparently it's "skin cancer season" and there has to be at least one round-the-clock dermatologist on call. Since Iz is working the overnight, I'm gonna have the house to myself, and tonight would be a good opportunity for me to have friends over. Assuming that Jo isn't completely pissed and done being my friend, that is.

I push the button to call the elevator to my floor and wait for it. It seems like Jo's cool whenever it's just me and her. She's my usual, bubbly, happy, friendly Jo whenever it's just us. Maybe she wouldn't mind coming over for a beer later so we can pick out this goddamn song. The elevator door opens up and I step right inside, but I'm instantly irritated. Standing in the back with his eyes on his pager is that douchebag in pink scrubs. _Jo said yesterday that she didn't want nor did she need my help with him… so I just won't say anything. But boy do I want to kick him in his teeth. _

And I don't even want to beat him up specifically because he put his hands on Jo… I want to kick his ass for hitting a female period. It's a really big pet peeve of mine when guys hit girls. I don't care if a girl is coming after you with razor blades…if you're a guy, you don't have any business hitting a girl back. Plus, I can't even imagine what Jo could've possibly done for him to punch her in her face. Maybe the girl is some kind of psycho-maniac that she doesn't show around me. But from what I've seen… Jo doesn't really give anybody a reason to so much as raise a voice at her. I don't know maybe it's because I grew up with an asshole dad that used to hit my crazy ass mother, but guys that hit girls REALLY get under my skin.

The elevator door opens up again to let me off on my floor. I don't even look back at him before I walk off. The only reason I didn't say anything or do anything to that asshole is because I think Jo's already pissed at me for some odd reason and I don't need her to be pissed with me furthermore for breaking my foot off in her boyfriend's ass. I can't afford for her to be mad at me at all right now because I'm desperate for her help with this song. I yank open the door to Dermatology and walk straight inside. It smells so calm and homely in here as opposed to the rest of the hospital. Derm really is like a totally different world. It's like it's separate from the rest of the hospital. Nobody in here is rushed, everybody is calm… it's pleasant. It's a pleasant place for Iz to work.

"Oooh… Stevens… your man-candy is here." A heavier-set, blonde-haired lady that's working at the reception desk calls to the back to grab Iz for me. The ladies up here love me. Not only because I'm devilishly handsome, but because they really like Izzie up here and they like the fact that I treat her well. I'm always up here bringing Iz lunch, making sure she's taking her pills, bringing her little snacks throughout the day. They literally love me up here on Derm. "Angelina, this is Isobel's soon-to-be-husband… the one we were telling you about." The blonde introduces me to a tiny redheaded girl. She must be an intern because she's new and I've never seen her up here before.

"Alex Karev." I formally introduce myself and lean against the counter while I wait for Iz.

"Alex is the total package, isn't he Mary?" A tall brunette one speaks up from her spot at a computer behind the counter I'm standing at. Her name is Rebecca and I think she's Iz's best friend that she works with. I wink at Becca and continue to wait while she keeps gushing over me. "He's sensitive. He works down on the floor with all the babies and the little kids. And he's so sweet…"

"Not to mention a bit of a bug-a-boo." Iz comes out through a wooden door and opens up the gate so she can come from behind the counter to see me. "What do you need, babe?" She instantly wraps her arms around my waist and puts her head against my chest. Call me cheesy, but I never get tired of this feeling. The feeling of her arms around me and her head on my chest while I'm looking down at her? It's priceless. "It's not even close to lunch time yet."

"Yeah I know…" I tangle a couple of my fingers in her hair out of sheer appreciation for her beauty. "I came to ask you a question. You're working the overnight tonight, aren't you?" Instead of opening her mouth, she just nods her head and squeezes her arms around my waist tighter. I curl my finger in her hair and pull her a little bit closer. "Alright, so I'm gonna pick that song out for you tonight and I'll have it by the time you get home tomorrow morning. But I came to see if you cared if I have one of the guys over for a beer?" _I think I can stop referring to Jo as "one of the guys" and my "buddy" now. I've thoroughly convinced myself that there are no feelings for her…at least for now. _"Jo said she'll help me out with the song since I've got shitty taste in love songs and I just wanted to know if you cared if she was over tonight."

"I don't care." She shakes her head and finally picks her head up off my chest. She looks up at me. "Just make sure the house doesn't stink if you're gonna have company. Light a couple candles to make sure it smells good and don't leave dishes in the sink. And there's clean clothes all over the living room so just stick them upstairs in our bedroom for me. Just…don't bring your company into a dirty house."

I chuckle because our house is never dirty. Iz is like… a neat freak. Everything is spic and span and everything has its own place…neat and tidy. The house never smells bad and the only thing that's "dirty" about it right now is the fact that yes, our laundry is all over the living room. But they're not dirty clothes, they're clean clothes. Plus, Jo wouldn't judge even if the house was dirty. I don't think she's like that. Then again, I don't know Jo much these days. I thought I knew her but I'm not sure if I do anymore. "Alright. Just wanted to make sure it was okay with you if she was over. If she's in a better mood today, you cool with taking another late lunch? I really want you to meet 'er."

"I'm fine with taking a late lunch." She shrugs and puts her head back down on my chest. "But don't force it. If she's busy or nervous to meet or whatever don't force it. I trust your judgment and I trust you when you say that she's a cool kid. I trust you, babe." She smiles. "Plus, you said she's just like you and I've been thinking… do I really need another Alex in my life? Even if she is the female Alex?"

"You love me." I kiss the top of her head. "And if you love me then you'd love Jo."

"I'll meet your new friend when the time is right." She lets me go but I can tell that she didn't want to. "I have to get back to work and so do you. I'll see you later, alright? And just call me on my cell to let me know if you want me to take a late a lunch or not."

"Alright babe, I will."

**Jo's Point of View.**

I think I'm gonna take Steph's advice and try to just be friends with Alex. Maybe she's right, you know? Maybe he's not the one that I'm thinking he is…but if he's not then I'm so confused, bcause I've never felt like this for a boy before. So he must be something special, right? I wouldn't clam up every time he talks to me. My stomach wouldn't churn and I wouldn't feel like I'm floating on a goddamn cloud every time he's around if he wasn't something special. In regardless to how I'm feeling, he made it clear yesterday that I'm just a girl with a silly little crush on him. He doesn't feel that way about me. I can't make him like me back and I'd rather be his friend than nothing at all.

The way I acted yesterday though, I wouldn't be surprised if he never wanted to talk to me again. I acted like a brat yesterday but it was within good reason. And it wasn't because Jason hit me. I was long over that by that time. By that time, I had already decided that I wasn't gonna return any of Jason's phone calls and I was going to avoid him at all costs. Eventually he'll get the picture that this is over. I acted like a complete bitch yesterday towards Alex, but… he was acting so weird towards me. And he kind of just assumed that I wanted to meet his wife right then and right there and I wasn't ready. I won't be ready to meet his wife/fiancé or whatever until I'm sure that I can sit in her presence without breaking down in tears.

It's my fault, really. I just assumed that the almost-kiss meant that he wanted to kiss me as much as I wanted to kiss him which wasn't the case. And now I'm embarrassed because I kind of just threw myself on him, assuming that he felt the same way when he didn't. But I really did forget that he was engaged to be married…I swear I did. We just got to talking that day and it felt so… right to kiss him. I felt like we were really connecting but that's my fault because I guess we weren't. It was all in my head… So yesterday, my bitchy attitude, it was crossed between being irritated with myself for thinking that he seriously felt the same attraction that I felt and being annoyed at the fact that he was just pushing me into meeting his fiancé.

This might sound really cocky and arrogant and REALLY self-centered, but… Alex is the first guy that I've wanted that doesn't want me back and I mean that in the most modest way possible. I mean it in a sense that when I've crushed on a guy, the feeling was usually mutual. 99.9% of the time, the guy liked me back and we got together just like that. I've never felt this kind of rejection before and it's even worse because I'm expected to help him plan his wedding as his friend and then go sit at that wedding like it's not breaking my heart that the only man I've ever really, really, really wanted…is marrying someone that's ten times better than me.

I'm back on Dr. Torres' service again today and she ordered me to get labs for the osteosarcoma patient we operated on yesterday. The lab techs are running super slow today and I've been sitting here waiting for someone to service me for ten minutes already. "Wilson!" All of a sudden, Dr. Robbins' voice sounds from behind me. I'm not on her service so I'm not sure what she wants. I turn my head to let her know that she's got my attention. "Since you're already here and waiting, can you get me labs for…" She looks down at her electronic chart. "Webster. Brynn Webster."

"…B…" I wrinkle my brow and bite my lip. Now, I know there are a million Brynns in this world and probably a thousand of them reside in Seattle. But I can't help but wonder… Even though I never knew her last name… "…How old is that patient, Dr. Robbins? And what's… what's she in for?"

"She's been in for a little less than a week now. She was brought in as a trauma patient…something about a truck driver not being able to see her in the street. Multiple crush injuries, hematoma…the whole nine. Poor kid's been conscious and in pain for three days now." Dr. Robbins closes her eyes like she's thinking. "I think she's two and a half but that's off the top of my head because I'm too lazy to reopen her chart."

"…Can I…" I cover my mouth with my hand because I'm probably going to start crying here in a minute. "Can I see her? I…" I put down the paper chart that Dr. Torres handed me earlier on the counter. "I'm sorry…" I hold my pager so it doesn't fall off my scrub top and make a break for the Peds floor. I'm still not sure if the little girl is who I think it is, but what are the chances? And if she's been here for nearly a week now, how come I didn't know sooner? I slow my running pace down to a light jog so I don't get into trouble. I get to the Pediatric nurses' station. Out of breath, I start to talk. "What room is…" I'm breathing so heavy. "Brynn Webster in?"

One of the nurses looks down at her computer. "307… Can I help you, Dr. Wilson?"

I turn around and start running back to room 307. I know it's terrible of me to wish this upon somebody else's child, but I swear to god I hope it's somebody else's kid and not mine. Okay, she's not really MY kid but she might as well have been. I fed that little girl every single day for a month. I hope to god that I didn't go through all of that trouble to get that little girl taken off her mom only for her to get hit by a fucking car. I rest my head against a wall and take a couple breaths to mentally prepare myself for the possibility that my kid might be in this room.

I wrap my hand around the doorknob and twist it. I push it open and walk inside. It's really quiet in here except for the humming of machines and ventilators and the soft sound of children's cartoons playing. I push the pink curtain to the side and purse my lips together in preparation for what I might see. _Oh no… _I recognize those chubby, cream colored cheeks and that thick brown hair that curls at the ends. And those long eyelashes and unruly eyebrows further confirm my suspicion. _Don't cry… don't cry. I don't want to wake her up with my crying. _"Brynnie…" I whisper to myself as I walk closer to the bed.

On the up side of all this, she looks really comfortable. She has a little bandage wrapped around her head and a bright purple cast on her arm and a pink one on her leg. She's sucking on one of those generic green pacifiers that the hospital gives to newborn babies. And it looks like she's breathing on her own. _Why didn't I know she was here sooner? Granted I got kicked off Peds so I wouldn't have known…but still. I feel so lousy. What if she doesn't even remember me? _Because I can't help myself, I nestle my finger into the palm of her hand. I went through all of that to get her taken off her addict of a mother just for the poor thing to get hit by a damn car… She's a baby. How does a baby get hit by a car? Who was supposed to be watching her?

Just when it's so quiet in here that I could hear a pin drop, my pager goes off. I squeeze it tight in my hand to shut it up so I don't wake her up. I really don't want to leave her. I want to be here when she wakes up but I'm needed elsewhere… When I silence my pager, I look down to see who wants me. _What the hell is Alex paging me for? _Slowly, I take my finger out of Brynn's hand. "I'll be back… I promise I'll be back, sweetheart." I lean down and kiss her on a part of her cheek that won't hurt her badly battered body. "I'll be back." I turn and very reluctantly, leave her room. I shut the door behind myself and go back to the nurses' station, but Dr. Robbins stops me.

"Are you alright there, Wilson?" She asks. I nod my head, wiping away a tear that fell out of my eye. That really hurts, man. Seeing my kid like that, I mean. "Are you sure?" I nod again and cough because that annoying gunk that you get when you're crying hard is stuck in my throat. "You know you're still not supposed to be up here on this floor without supervision… are you sure you're okay?" She touches my shoulder.

"…I know that little girl." I wipe my eyes really hard and attempt to pull myself together. "She used to live in the apartment across from me. I…" I sniff and cough again. "I called the police so they would take her away from her mother. I used to feed her dinner because her mom wouldn't feed her. And it just sucks, you know? That I did all of that… just for her to get hit by a car." I sniff again and groan. "Ughhhh…." I sigh. "I'm sorry, Dr. Robbins… that won't happen again." I sniff once more. "Can you just page me when she wakes up? I really want to see her while she's awake, if that's possible."

"I'll make sure the nurse on her case pages you as soon as she wakes up. I won't even tell her to page me… I'll tell her to page you. Alright?"

"Thanks."

"She's gonna be okay, Wilson… she'll be okay."

"I know."

**X X X**

"You paged me?" I approach him when I finally get to where he paged me to. He paged me to a fucking elevator… not to a room, but to an elevator. Whatever though. I just have to remind myself that being his friend is better than being nothing at all so I have to put aside the irritation I'm feeling towards being in his presence. It's just so hard being around him knowing that I'm dying for him to notice that I'm slowly falling for him and he's too wrapped up in his fiancé to notice that I'm right here in front of him.

"Yeah. I was looking for you all morning but I couldn't find you so I had to page you." _Stop looking at him. Don't look at him…it just hurts worse when I look at him. _"Are you still mad at me?"

"No, but I do want to talk to you about something, okay?" Out of pure nervousness, I start wringing my hands. "I don't want you to be mad at me, okay? I just want you to be honest with me because… well, by saying this, I'm being honest with you. Are you listening?" _Just ask him if he felt anything during the almost kiss. Ask him if he feels the same way. Ask him if he's fighting the same feelings I'm fighting. And if he says no… then… _"I really want to talk to you about something—"

"Great… I have something to talk to you about too." Oh my god, YES! So he IS feeling the same? He wants to talk about the almost kiss too? YES.

"Really?" I look up at him. "You first."

"…Alright." He shrugs his shoulders. "I was wondering… if you were up to meeting Izzie today because if you're not busy tonight, I want you to come over and chill and drink a beer and help me pick out this song. She already told me that she doesn't care if I have company over later but I'd feel better if you guys met. She usually meets all my friends. So I was just wondering." I'm sure that he can see the disappointment written clear across my face. Well that's not what I thought he was gonna say. I've gotta stop assuming things. Damn. "…Look Jo, I know I haven't really been a good friend lately ever since Iz got back from Chehalis but I'm just trying to juggle between being your friend and being a soon-to-be-husband as well as a good doctor. I'm sorry that I can't hang out and be buddies with you all the time but that's what I like about our friendship. I like how we can just pick up where we left off even if we don't have time for each other." I can't even open my mouth without tears spewing out of my eyes, my nose and my mouth. I'm just gonna cry out of all of my body holes. "…So? What do you say? You wanna hang out tonight?"

"…Sure." I bite my lip. "What time should I come over?"

"Eh… you don't work tomorrow and I go in late tomorrow, so… around 9:30? Is that good for you?" I nod my head to avoid having to talk any more than I already have to. I swear with every word I say, I'm closer and closer to breaking down. "Great… I'll order pizza and stuff, my treat. uh… I'll text you with my address? What's your number?"

"…942-555-….0989."

"Alright, I got it." He's typing it into his cell phone. "Now what were you gonna say? You were saying that you wanted to tell me something before you let me go first…"

"Huh? Nothing."

"…Come on, Jo… you can tell me anything. What were you gonna say?"

"…I was actually just gonna ask you when you wanted me to help you out with that song." I bite my lip. "…I was gonna be honest with you and say that I was really excited to help you out." I clear my throat. "So 9:30? I'll wear my PJs and… we can just chill." _It just physically hurt me to say that. _ "I'll see you tonight…buddy?"

"Yeah… I'll see you."


	14. Chapter 14

I'm honestly not so sure about this. I feel like if I had said no to him about helping pick the song, he'd think that I was just acting weird again and he'd dismiss our entire friendship and that's not what I want. But in saying yes, I'm not sure what I just did to myself. I can't promise myself that I'm going to make it out of this without having to excuse myself to the bathroom to break down and cry. I've already resigned myself to the fact that he doesn't have feelings for me, despite the fact that I really thought we made a connection. I've gotten used to the thought of being his friend. And I'm not even going to attempt to ask him about his feelings anymore, because every single time I say something and I think the conversation is leading one way, it goes another and I end up just being really fucking sad for the rest of the day.

I lean forward and turn the nozzle to shut off the water and swallow a lump in my throat. I'm really proud of myself because up until this point, I haven't cried since this afternoon. I have a lot on my mind between worrying about if Brynn is okay and being all depressed over the fact that I want someone that doesn't even think of me, so crying is something I would've expected to do a lot of…but nope. I haven't cried in a few hours and I'm still going strong. And usually when I want to cry, the shower is the place I do it so again, I'm on a roll with surprising myself.

I pull back the curtain and grab my towel off the edge of the sink. I open it up and wrap it around my body. I reach up and pull my hair out of the bun I threw it up in. I would've washed my hair but it takes forever to air dry and when it dries, it dries all wavy and messy and there's no way I'm going over Alex's with bad hair. I tuck my towel under my armpit so it won't fall and grab my toothbrush. I squeeze a pile of toothpaste on my toothbrush and start brushing my teeth.

The bathroom door opens up and Steph walks in it wearing nothing but her bra and her underwear. "You coming to Joe's with us?" She goes immediately over to the shower and starts her water. "I don't know if Leah and them told you about it, but we're all going to Joe's for a drink and then we're probably gonna go back to Heather and Leah's to just chill." She unclasps her bra and tosses it in the hamper then moves on to her underwear.

"I thought I told you that I'm going to Alex's." When I'm done brushing my teeth, I put my toothbrush back inside the toothbrush holder and grab Steph's brush off the shelf on the wall. "I swear you asked me this already and I told you that I was going over Alex's for a couple hours." I start dragging her brush through my hair. My towel fell down to my waist but my hair is long enough to cover my boobs so I'm not worried plus it's Steph in here with me.

"You didn't tell me that." She steps into the shower and closes the curtain behind herself. "…Why are you doing that to yourself? Are you seriously going over there?" She pokes her head out of the shower and looks at me. "Seriously, Jo. I don't get how somebody so smart can make such dumb decisions. You are dumb."

"He's still my friend and I'm just going over there as his friend." When I'm done with my hair, I grab my makeup bag and rummage through it for my eyeliner. "He asked me to come over for a beer because he wants me to help him pick out a wedding song. I can be his friend, Steph. It'll suck…but I can be his friend." I pull my eyelid down so I can apply my bottom eyeliner. "And I really don't think I'm being dumb. He still doesn't know that I'm crushing on him and I don't want him to ever know. He asked me and if I had said no, that'd be a dead giveaway. I just have to suck it up." I move on to my next eye when I'm done with the one I was just working on.

"I just don't get you though." She closes the curtain back and talks to me through it. "Why do you have to go after the losers, the marrieds and the psychos? You're not ugly, Jo… you can have anyone you want. But you have a shitty way of picking them."

"…The heart wants what the heart wants?" I guess she's right about that. I do tend to fall for boys I have no business falling for. And then I always end up so heartbroken and pissed off and bitter when the guy ends up being married or soon-to-be-married or a loser or a psycho. I don't know, maybe I'm just attracted to the real jerks. I can't explain why I fall for the ones I shouldn't fall for. "It's not like I know they're married, engaged, a loser or a psycho when I initially go after them though. It's just my shitty luck…not my shitty judgment."

"Liar. You knew your professor was married and you still had sex with him. And you knew Karev was engaged. The only one you can't be accountable for is Chest Peckwell and you're still being an idiot by not breaking up with him."

"Hey Steph… shut up." I put my makeup bag away and sit down on the toilet not because I have to pee but because I want to finish our conversation. "…I already know I make shitty decisions without you reiterating it. Okay, my professor? That was a huge mistake and I knew it was a mistake while we were doing it. That one WAS shitty decision making and I admit that. And Jason… that was shitty decision making too. I'm not saying if I never slept with him he wouldn't be so psycho, because you can't fix crazy and clearly he was already crazy before I got with him… and yeah I fucked up by having sex with him and I get that too. But Alex is different. It's not like I liked him at first…"

"If you knew it was a mistake then why'd you do it?" She shuts off the shower water and opens up the curtain. "You said you knew it was a mistake while you were doing it. If you knew it was a mistake then why'd you even do it? It's not like you didn't know it was a mistake before you did it. What did you, let him crawl on top of you, start humping then say WHOA WAIT this is a mistake? You're not that stupid."

"No…" I clutch my towel to my body and close my eyes. She's kind of pissing me off but it's Steph so I'm trying to be really lenient about it. "I was just like… thinking. While we were doing it I was just like… wow, this is the lowest thing you've ever done. But I didn't stop it because… I dunno." I shrug my shoulders. "It felt good and I liked it…so I just didn't stop. But I cried afterwards and that kinda ruined it, so."

"Are you just super attracted to old guys?" She wraps her own towel around herself and goes over to the sink just like I did when I got out. "I had a friend in high school that was like that. Her name was Lydia. She was like weirdly attracted to teachers…it was so strange."

"Dr. Gaines wasn't that old." And now I remember why I never stay mad at Steph. She never means to be mean to me when she mocks me and tells me how stupid I am. In a strange way, I'm actually quite thankful for her. She keeps my head on straight. "He was like… 35 maybe 36. And he was light-skinned with a short haircut and he had pretty eyes…ooh, and he had a chin strap." I close my eyes and smile. "He was hot Steph… he was like… Dr. Avery but a little bit darker and a little bit more muscular. And he was always looking at me like he was gonna get me. He tried from day one. He was always like… flirting with me, keeping me after class for stupid shit. He grabbed my ass once but he swore it was because I had lint on my back. He flirted with me a lot and one day he even told me that he wanted me. So I just…" I sigh. "Lesson learned, though. I'm never sleeping with another married man. That was trashy."

"So you're not really attracted to older guys, it's more like you're in love with…basically all biracial boys except for Avery. You never stood a chance against Jason from the start because he's everything. Biracial, muscular, shaved head…everything you like. Got it." She starts to brush her own teeth.

"No, because I'm attracted to Karev and he's white." I tune my nose up. "…I dunno, I guess I don't have a type. I usually did only go after…" I start to smile but only because I'm nervous and what I'm about to say has potential to be disastrous. "Okay, when I was in high school, I really did love… dark skinned boys. Like your brother? I would've dated him in high school. Athletic, tall, handsome, dark skinned…that was my type. But in college, it switched to biracial boys… but I don't think it had anything to do with the color of their skin because I think Shane is hideous and I find Alex so sexy and he's a white guy. So I don't really know my type."

"…Glad to know my roommate isn't a racist." She giggles with a mouthful of toothpaste.

"If I were racist I wouldn't have moved in with you." I stand up from the toilet so I can finally go put some clothes on my ass.

"I think you just like guys with big junks."

"Oh, that's totally important." I open the bathroom door and shake my head. "If that was case, I totally wouldn't have even given Jason a chance. His shit was pathetic."

"I've been meaning to ask you if it was any good but I couldn't figure out the right time."

I bust out in serious, gut-busting laughter as I drop my towel and go over to my dresser. "It lasted a whole ten minutes! He's as big as my PINKY…when it's hard! And it's as skinny as a pencil! I'm so serious!" I hear her in the bathroom laughing right along with me. "He got so mad at me because I called him 'pencil-dick' a couple days ago. Steph, it was PATHETIC." I grab a pair of purple lace underwear from my top drawer and put them on.

"Wait, but I thought you said you got off." She walks into my room because my room is attached to the bathroom and she has to walk through my room in order to get to her room. "You told me you got off on it, so it couldn't have been that bad…"

"He's good with his mouth and that's all." I grab a bra from my dresser and strap it around my body. "If he never went down on me, I would've had to fake an orgasm to get him off me."

"Oh Jo, please tell me you didn't go down on him too…"

"HOW COULD I?! THERE'S NOTHING TO SUCK!" That REALLY makes her laugh. "…Okay, I'm not that big of a hoe. I don't just go around sucking dick for no reason." I search through my drawers for a suitable t-shirt and shorts to wear to Alex's. "But I'm not gonna sit here and act like I've never been down on a boy because I have…. I've gone down on one of my old boyfriends and it's something that we had to come to a mutual agreement to. And if I had gotten a good month in with Jason, I might've considered it…but there is literally NOTHING to suck. Steph, the sex was horrible. The head was great but the sex was awful…"

"…So wait… you only go down on boys that go down on you? So only one guy's ever given you head?" She standing there like I just told her that she's ugly. She seems insulted. But can I be truthful for a second? I really like talking to her about this stuff. I've never really had a girlfriend I could confide in the way I can confide in her. And I'm kind of scared to lose her but I just won't think about it. "Girl, you're missing out…"

"Oh hell no." I sit down on my bed to put on a pair of socks. "Not to sound like a hoe, but almost every guy I've slept with went down on me…almost every guy. I don't have a problem with that. That's my favorite part of sex, honestly. But… I'm not returning no favors so don't think you're special. Sorry, but I don't just go around putting anything in my mouth."

"Why do you always act like I'm gonna call you a hoe? I don't think you're a hoe. You've only been with seven guys. You're a little freak but a whore you are not. Stop thinking I'm gonna call you a hoe." She grabs my deodorant and pops the cap off. "But anyway, I had a boyfriend in college like Jason." She rolls deodorant under her armpits and puts it back. "He didn't have a small dick or anything, he just… he was awful in bed. But his head made up for everything. And that's one way we're alike. Head's my favorite part."

I start to put my t-shirt on but I stop for a second because now that I thought about how much I like Steph, something's been on my mind. "I don't mean to be off topic, but…" I bite my lip and take a breath. "…What if we have a fight? Me and you, I mean. What if… what if we fall out with each other. What if we fight and you kick me out and we never talk again? Then what?"

"Well first of all, can I borrow this? All my stuff's dirty." She holds up one of my t-shirts and I nod. "And second of all, we're never gonna fight. There's a lot of things you do that annoy me and a lot of things you do I don't agree with but I get why you do it and it doesn't bother me enough to the point where I'm gonna yell at you about it. And I wouldn't kick you out because I don't have a right to. This isn't just my place anymore. You pay rent and stuff so this is your place too. Why would I kick you out? And plus, you're my best friend. Why would I just never talk to you again? You know way too much about me for me to piss you off and never talk to you again. You can ruin my reputation with all the shit I've told you."

I giggle at that. "I know that was like…really off topic, but it kinda made me nervous to think about it. You're my best friend too but I'm kinda feeling like I have too much to lose with you. I hope we don't fight with each other." I shove my head into my t-shirt and stand up. "And if there's something you don't like about me, you can tell me. I just…" I look down at the ground because I just got really vulnerable all of a sudden. "I don't usually open up to people but you made it so easy. And I'm really bad with losing people I love, so… yeah."

"There's a lot of things you do that I don't like. But the things I don't like are outweighed by the things I find great." She wraps her arms around me in the most awkward hug I've ever been included in. "…You leave your hair in the shower and that pisses me off, so this is me telling you that if you insist on washing your hair every day, CLEAN IT OUT OF THE DAMN SHOWER." I laugh at that and whisper "okay" to her. "And you lock the door at all times which is annoying, especially if I just ran out to grab the mail…but I understand that you're used to locking doors… and you don't wash your clothes that much and that drives me crazy, but you're getting better with getting that it's OKAY to use all the laundry detergent because I'll get more. A lot of the things that I don't like about you are okay because I get that you grew up differently than I did. You're kind of a loner but you grew up alone and I grew up with a brother and a sister. I get why you do the things you do."

"…You leave your bras everywhere. And you shed your hair all over the sink…but that's it." I didn't realize how tight I was hugging her until just now.

"And your self-worth…that pisses me off too. You think you're such a shitty person when you're not." She moves my hair out of her way and gives me the nastiest, wettest, sloppiest kiss on my cheek. "Love you though!"

"Ew… don't you ever." I wipe my cheek off. "…Let me get dressed before I'm late." I grab a pair of shorts. "…And please believe that I'm not gonna make a fool out of myself over Alex's. I won't, okay? I know how to separate my romantic feelings from my friendship feelings."

…I think I might've just lied to her.

**Alex's Point of View.**

Is it bad that I'm kind of excited to spend a little bit of time with Jo? I really am excited. She's my buddy. She's not closer to me than Mere and Cristina are just yet but I think with time, she can be my third girl best friend. I really haven't been that good of a friend to her lately but I hope that tonight will make up for it. I just don't have the time to spend with her that I had back when Izzie was gone for a little while. Because when Iz was gone, I didn't have to envelope myself in wedding planning, she wasn't banned from Peds and I could hang out with her during work. But she's still not allowed on Robbins' service and I don't have enough time during the day to seek her out so we can chat.

I flip the light switch to the living room, collapse down on the couch and kick my feet up on the coffee table. It's 9:45 and she's still not here. I wonder if she just decided to blow me off. I texted her two hours ago and told her my address and she said she'd be here at 9:30 with an exclamation point at the end of it. I hope she didn't blow me off. That would suck. I already ordered the pizza and I have a whole six-pack of beer in the fridge. I wouldn't mind drinking a six-pack and eating a large pizza all by myself, but I was really counting on her to help me pick out this goddamn song. Izzie's gonna skin my ass alive if I don't have this damn song by tomorrow.

I can't figure why she'd blow me off, though. She seemed so excited about it earlier and in her text message, it sounded like she was still gonna come. I don't know, maybe she's still mad at me for suggesting that she had feelings for me. In retrospect, that was an asshole move of me to just accuse her without having any solid proof. It's pretty clear that Jo and I are just really good friends and I honestly don't think that she'd ever throw a wrench in the equation just like that. It just made a lot of sense to me at the moment. How she got immediately upset whenever I mentioned meeting Izzie? The only reason behind that, that I could think of at the moment, was that she had some kind of feelings for me. That was pretty silly now that I think about it.

I grab the remote off the coffee table and turn the TV on. The news is on and right now, I realize how detached from reality I can get at times. I spend so much time in the hospital that I hardly ever know what's happening in real life if I don't catch a casual conversation in the OR or overhear the nurses' conversations. _Apparently it's gonna be 70 degrees tomorrow. _Just as I get more comfortable on the couch than I already am, the doorbell rings. I swipe my wallet off the coffee table to pay for the pizza and stand up. I unlock the door and yank it open. It's not the pizza guy. _Hey, she didn't blow me off._

"Sorry I'm late…" She has her arms folded across her chest and she's standing with all her weight on her left leg. I don't mean to, but I catch myself giving her a quick onceover from head to toe. She has on a black fitted t-shirt with orange letters that spell out "PRINCETON" across the chest and black and grey plaid pajama pants. Her hair is up in a high, side-swept ponytail that still manages to come down and rest on her shoulder. I've never really saw her in clothes other than her scrubs. "I was gonna wear shorts but it started raining as soon as I left the house so I ran back in to change into pants so…yeah. That made me late."

I step aside and let her in. I shut the door behind her. "I was beginning to think that you blew me off. You've been mad at me lately, so it made sense that you would." As soon as I shut the door, the bell rings again and I suck my teeth. "Go 'head in the living room…that's the pizza." I grab my wallet off the top of the mantle that I stuck it on and open it up. I pull the door back open and take a twenty out. Me and the pizza guy exchange the pizza and the money. "Keep the change." I mumble. I shut the door again and lock it up for the night.

"I don't know what I was expecting your house to look like, but I wasn't expecting it to look like this." She's standing in front of the couch like she doesn't know if she should sit down. I put the pizza down on the coffee table and run to the kitchen to grab the beer out of the fridge. "…Where's your wife?" She calls to me from the living room.

"Working the overnight." I grab the beer and walk with it back to the living room.

"I haven't been mad at you, by the way." She sits down on the couch and unties her shoelaces. "And I wouldn't just blow you off for no reason. I'm not that big of a bitch." I like how she just made herself at home. She tucks her legs underneath her body and leans back against the couch cushions. Some girls are all weird when they're over their friend's house for the first time. They act like they don't want to seem like a burden or whatever. I like how Jo's not afraid to just make herself comfortable. "I've just been in a crappy mood lately all around. Sorry for taking it out on you."

"It's cool. I've been a pretty crappy friend towards you lately, so let's just call it even." I sit down on the other end of the couch and open up the box of pizza. I grab a slice, roll it up and take a bite. She leans forward and grabs a piece too. "And what do you mean by 'You weren't expecting my house to look like this'? What, were you expecting me to live in a pigsty?"

"That's not what I was saying." She's eating her pizza real ladylike, taking tiny little bites and chewing with her mouth closed. I don't think it's an act, though. I think she really eats like that. "I wasn't expecting it to be so big. I know that it's only you and your fiancée that live here, I wasn't expecting to walk into a house that's built for a family of like…five." She jerks her head to the side to move her hair out of her way and takes another bite.

"It's actually a funny story about this house." I shove the last little bit of pizza in my mouth and chew hard. "It actually used to be Mere's house but during my intern year, she rented it out to Iz and George because she needed roommates. So eventually George and Torres moved together and Mere and Shepherd moved together, so now it's me and Iz's. It's really not that big. It's a two-bedroom and we're working on having kids."

"…Kids?" She's busy eating the crust of her pizza. She eats like a bird if you ask me. "How many do you and your wife plan on having?"

"We never really discussed how many. I kind of want a daughter." I shrug and grab a beer from the pack. "So I guess we'll keep going until I get my daughter."

"Most people say they don't care as long as their baby is healthy."

"I'm not most people." I twist the cap off my beer and take a sip. "Besides, the people that say they don't care are damn liars. Everybody has a preference of what they want…if they tell you they don't, just assume that they're lying. I'm not afraid to admit that I want a girl."

"…Or some people really just don't give a damn, but there's that too." She finishes her first slice of pizza and wipes her hands on her pants. I swear I love how casual she is. She's cool with anything and everything. "So what if your wife has a boy…and another boy, and another boy and another boy…. are you just gonna keep trying? Until you get a girl?"

"It shouldn't be that hard. I think we're gonna have twins the first time around…at least that's what Iz thinks is gonna happen."

"There's never really a way to predict that for certain, is there? I mean, isn't it like…ten times more likely that you'll have one baby before you assume that you'll have multiples?"

"Nah." I put down my beer and wipe my mouth with the back of my hand. "Iz was sick a while back, so back when she was still a little bit healthy, we decided to go all scientific with it and freeze some of her eggs. I think we're gonna go with implanting three the first time around…and that's assuming that only two will take. If all three take, that's great. But usually only one or two take."

"She was sick?"

"Yeah… she had melanoma real bad. Went through the worst chemo out there, a bunch of surgeries… had a real grim prognosis. She's alright now but I thought I was gonna lose her for a minute there." I take another sip of my beer to avoid getting all choked up. I usually get real emotional when I'm talking about how sick Iz was and I don't want to ruin me and Jo's little hangout session by talking about my cancery fiancée so I won't. "She's fine now, though…"

"I'm so sorry." She takes her legs out from underneath her body and pulls her knees into her chest. Again, since I've never really seen her outside of her scrubs, I never really realized how tiny she was. She has long legs but she's not all that tall. She's actually pretty petite. She does have a decent rack and a pretty decent ass for her size though, and that's just me being a guy. I thought she measured up pretty well with Iz but she really doesn't. She's so much smaller in stature than Iz, but she does have curves…I'll give her that. "You're a really good man for that. I know a lot of jerks that would run."

"Yeah, I know jerks that would run too." I put my beer down again and pick up my laptop. "So anyway, let's get down to business." I fling open the laptop and push the power button. "I spent the other day googling songs but they all seemed really cheesy and generic, you know? I wanna pick the right song out. I don't want to seem like I didn't put any effort into it. I want the song to actually reflect how I feel. I don't want something stupid."

"That's a lot of pressure to put on one song." She scoots over so she can look at the laptop too. "Are you looking for a ballad? Or do you want something more…pop-ish?" She's sitting close to me but still at a decent distance. But I smell her. I think it's her hair that I smell or maybe she has perfume on, but either way it goes…she smells really good. "It's cute that you're taking the time out to actually listen to the lyrics though, that's nice." She reaches across me so she can go to YouTube. _Wow she smells good. _"Try…" She opens up another tab and goes to Google. She types in "love songs" like I did when I googled them and clicks on the first thing that pops up. "Ooh, that's a good one. You ever hear 'Wanted' by Hunter Hayes?"

"No?" I look at her through the corner of my eye. _Don't look at her. Because if I look at her, then I'll start to do what I did before and I just got through convincing myself that I don't find her attractive and if I look at her and realize that she's one of the most beautiful chicks that I've ever laid my eyes on I'll start to feel guilty and this night will be ruined. So I'm gonna stop looking at her. _"What are the lyrics like?"

She goes back to YouTube and pops the song into the search bar. "It's a cute little song. It's kind of country but the lyrics are cute…"

"First of all, no country. Second of all, I don't want cute. I want meaningful and truthful…"

"Just listen." She presses play on the song and some cheesy little country tune starts playing. I watch her mouth move along to the lyrics while it's playing and if I listen close enough, she's singing. "You know I'd fall apart without you… I don't know how you do what you do. 'Cause everything that don't make sense about me makes sense when I'm with you…" She's not American Idol worthy, but her singing voice is…I don't know, pretty? _Is there anything this girl does that isn't pretty? _"Come on Alex, you have to think that this song is cute." She takes a break from singing just to talk to me but goes right back to it. "I wanna wrap you up, wanna kiss your lips I wanna make you feel wanted. I wanna call you mine, wanna hold your hand forever and never let you forget…Baby I wanna make you feel wanted."

"…No. It's kind of making it seem like she's not mine yet but she is. You know? He's saying that he wants to let the girl know that she's wanted…but I don't have to want Izzie because I've already got her. So no. Next." I pause the song and go back to Google.

"You're so picky." She starts scrolling for me. "Here's a song, why don't you choose Mirrors? That's meaningful, it's not country and it's modern. How much more beautiful can you get than 'I don't want to lose you now. I'm looking right at the other half of me. The vacancy that sat in my heart is a space that now you hold.' That's beautiful… she'd totally love it."

"Stop being an asshole." I playfully tap her on her shoulder and keep looking through the list we Googled. "…Put it this way, if you were getting married, what song would you want your husband to play for you?"

"…No song at all, because I'm not getting married and even if I ever do, I'm not into the whole churchy-church wedding wear a white dress and walk me down the aisle. No thanks. Let's just go down to city hall make it official and take me to Cracker Barrel afterwards for the reception."

"….Wow. Are you sure you weren't born with a penis or something?" There's no way that she's a chick. She's ME in the female form. I totally agree with her. Maybe it's a street-kid thing that we have in common. "Seriously dude… I'm kind of doubting that you're a girl right now."

"I'm a lady, I swear. I live off… Midol and tampons. I have a vagina…. I'm a chick." She grabs the laptop off me and starts scrolling. "I just wouldn't waste my money on something that I don't really want. Plus, I don't even have a dad to walk me down the aisle…" Her eyebrows are wrinkled like she's thinking. "But if I were a bride….. I would hope that my groom would play something like Truly Madly Deeply by Savage Garden." She's not even looking at me anymore. All of her attention is on the computer. "But I'm into old school 80s and 90s love songs, so I'm not much help when it comes to the modern stuff."

"Truly Madly Deeply is good… I actually think I have that song on my—"

"You ever hear I'll Be? By… Edwin McCain? That's sweet, that's meaningful, it'll bring everybody to tears." She cuts me off like she's not interested in anything I have to say. "You have to pick one, Alex. So far I've got Kiss Me, All of Me, Collide, Lego House, I Swear, A Thousand Years, Chasing Cars…. Come on, pick one. This shouldn't be as hard as you're making it seem like. Everybody has a love song that relates to how they feel. Whether they're the child of darkness or the happiest person in the world, there's a song out there for them. Hell, even I have a song that puts me in my feelings. Stop acting like your heart is a big black hole and choose one."

"….Whoa… Jo Wilson…THE child of darkness has feelings?" I take the laptop off her and chuckle. She rolls her eyes at me. "What's your favorite long song then?"

"I didn't say I had a favorite, I said I have one that puts me in my feelings." When I take the laptop off her, she pulls her legs into her chest again and rests her chin on her kneecaps. "That's always the case though. There's literally a love song for everyone. Good mood, bad mood…it doesn't matter."

"Okay, so… you're going on a psychotic killing spree… what love song is playing in the background for you?"

She laughs. "…I dunno." For the first time in a little while, she looks at me. "How about You Oughta Know by Alanis Morissette? That's a pretty angry one."

"You are twisted, girl. You are twisted." Okay, here's the Jo I love. Bubbly, giggly and really playful? Here she is. "Do you have anything inside of that head that isn't scary? Like the song that puts you in your feelings?"

"…Skinny Love. Not the one by Bon Iver, but the one by Birdy." She puts her legs down again and looks away from me. "Not because I'm anorexic or bulimic or anything like that… it just kind of makes me think about this guy." She licks her lips. I can tell by the look on her face that she really just opened up to me on a personal level. "…There's this part in the song where… it says…" She's looking straight ahead, not at me. " 'Now all your love is wasted and who the hell was I? I'm breaking at the britches at the end of all your lines…' " She clears her throat. "Like…at the end of every word he says, I kinda just…" I hear her sigh. "But everyone has a song like that, yeah?"

"…Is the guy Peckwell?"

"OH GOD, NO." Her voice just went from soft to a yell. "He's the one I'd kill while I'm on that psychotic killing spree..."

"Well is this guy at least good? Peckwell's a douche. Is this guy at least nice?"

"Mhm." She nods. "He's a good guy… He's really sweet and funny…and…he's…" She's still looking straight and not at me. I don't get why she doesn't just ditch Peckwell and get with the guy she's talking about. Jo's not ugly by any means. She can have any guy she wants. She's awesome… somebody would give her a chance. "I don't ever want to get married or start a family…but if I were to ever settle down with a guy, he'd be the one. He doesn't even know I exist, though. That's the crappy thing." She turns her head and now we're eye to eye again. "And he's not into me. He's into this… other girl. She's gorgeous, I don't blame him. But… you know."

"…Is the guy Ross? I can talk to him for you if you want me to." I nudge her because she's getting really upset and I don't want her to be. Jo's like…my adorable little buddy and I don't want her to cry or be upset. We're here to have fun. "And you can't just assume he doesn't know you exist. That's the thing with chicks… they think the guy's not into them but they have no idea. A good chunk of the time, us guys are just as into the girl as the girl is into us…but we want the girl to make the first move."

"It's not Shane. You don't know him… he works in another part of the hospital. And trust me… he's not into me. He's seeing someone and she's gorgeous. And they're perfect for each other and I just don't fit into the equation. I don't get people like him. I get people like…Jason."

"If you let me know the guy's name, I could try to talk to him. Unless it's Avery. He's so far up Ape's ass it's not funny. There's no talking him out of her and I'm not exactly in the business of wrecking a home."

"I don't find Dr. Avery attractive. But um… you don't need to know the guy's name. I'll tell you someday when it doesn't even matter anymore. I don't want you to go run your mouth about it. Then I'll have people thinking I'm the loser intern with a crush on the hot-shot…nurse. I'll tell you someday." She pulls her hair out of her ponytail and clears her throat for the second time tonight. Her hair topples down in wavy, loose curls around her chest. Iz used to have hair like that. "…You wanna play a game?" She shakes her hands through her hair to get it to fall right.

"…I don't have any games. I have a Wii but that's about it…" Funny how she just switched subjects like that.

"You don't need anything to play. Just yourself." She crosses her legs and turns to face me. "It's called Never Have I Ever." She holds her hands out. "Okay, so you just put your hands up…and you start saying things that you've NEVER done. And if I've done it, I gotta put one of my fingers down and vice versa. The person who loses all their fingers first loses. Wanna play?"

"…Yeah, sounds simple enough. You first." I hold my hands up.

"Okay…" She's smiling. For the first time tonight, she's GENUINELY smiling. "Never have I ever… Never have I ever gotten high."

"…Bull!" I put one of my fingers down because I HAVE gotten high before in my teenage years. "You're telling me you've never smoked or anything? You've never even been contact high?!"

"Nope." She shakes her head. "I was such a goody two-shoes in high school. And I was in the IVY LEAGUE. You get caught with weed on campus and you're ass out. I've never been high. Ever."

"You're full of shit." I shake my head at her. "…Never have I ever… had sex outside." I'm smiling too. We're really having a good time with each other. I'm really glad she's my friend. She makes me feel like I'm back in high school with all the laughing and joking around we do. I don't get to joke like this too much with Iz anymore. She puts one of her fingers down and my jaw drops. "You WHAT?!"

"…Well wait, does….. does in a car count as outside?" She laughs. "Because I've had sex in a car. That's not technically outside, but it's… not in a house."

"No a car doesn't count as outside."

"Well okay then." She keeps her finger down though.

"I said it DOESN'T count."

"…Yeah but I've had sex outdoors. It was at a bonfire…my boyfriend in college took me to a bonfire and we couldn't go do it in the car so we kinda just…yeah. We found a quiet place and it kind of happened." Her smile is so contagious. "…SO!" She claps her hands together. "Never have I ever…had a pregnancy scare. And that counts towards thinking you've gotten a girl pregnant."

I put my finger down. "I've had a few of those… all false alarms." I wink at her. "Never have I ever had sex with someone that was more than…8 years older than me."

"…Dammit." She mumbles and puts her finger down. "Stop tryna get me!"

"WAIT, YOU HAD SEX WITH A CREEPY OLD GUY?!"

"….He wasn't creepy or old, okay!" She's blushing so hard that it's adorable. "He was my…he was my microbio professor, okay? And he was hot!"

"No way."

"Yes… I told you, I really like sex okay? And I mean…. I dunno, I'm a freak. And he was hot and he was flirting with me and he wanted it…" She closes her eyes. "Are you judging me?"

"…Shit. I'm not judging you, I just realized that I lied." Yeah, I lied about that. My sexual experience with someone older happened so long ago that I forgot all about it but it happened and I can't lie about it. "I lost my virginity to my school nurse." I shrug.

"…WOW." She leans over and looks me dead in my face. "DO TELL."

"There's nothin' to tell." I reach forward and grab another beer. I offer it to her and she takes it so I just grab another. "I was…fifteen? Yep. And what can I say? I was a sexy fifteen year old. And I went to her office with a nosebleed. She was hittin' on me but she gave me tissues and sent me away. I spent the rest of the day thinkin' about her, so I went back to class and said I had a headache. I got sent back down and…bam." I take a chug of beer. "She was HOT too. Brunette, big boobs, nice ass… she was HOT. Even then, I had her screaming."

"Oh yeah right! You were fifteen, you probably didn't even know where to put it!" She takes a sip of her beer. "You were probably like that guy on Stepbrothers when he lost his virginity to the crazy chick in the bathroom. You were probably like…" She makes her voice all deep and mocks me. "Ew it's sticky and wet…wait, what's this white stuff!"

"Definitely not." I take another long, drowned out chug of beer. "Let's just say I'm blessed. I knew at a young age what to do and how to do it."

"Yep… we'll go with that." She rolls her eyes, smiles and shakes her head. "I just can't imagine you at FIFTEEN fucking the nurse and her not wondering if you knew what the hell you were doing. That's a bold step to lose your virginity to someone older… willingly, I mean because I guess that's not too unheard of."

"Oh whatever. Ask ANYONE…I'm blessed. And even if I wasn't, it's not the size that counts, it's what you do with it."

"Oh hell no, I beg to differ." She takes a quick sip of beer and puts it down. "If the size isn't right, it's not gonna get anything done. Trust me. This is coming from a girl. Any girl that says SIZE doesn't matter? She's just trying to make you feel better and she has a dildo, I'm just saying."

"…This is good. You can actually be useful to me." I have girl best friends like Mere and Cristina but I've never had a girl best friend like Jo. I've never been so open with a girl. She could come in handy for my own sex life. "As a girl….what's a girl's favorite position? MOST girl's favorite, anyway. For future reference."

"…Most of us like the regular…guy on top thing. I know a lot of girls whose favorite is missionary but I don't speak for all girls."

"Well what do you like? You're very useful to me, by the way. I'm finding out so much about girls from you."

"Me? I like head. Not giving, getting. I'll give but only if I'm getting…and I'll get but not give." She ties her hair back up in a ponytail. "But like I said, that's MOST girls not all… and I speak for myself. I know some girls that don't like head. My college roommate hated it but I thought the girl was nuts."

"Yeah….. I don't do that too often. I only do it to girls I really trust. I've done that to a handful of girls…maybe less than that." I feel like oral is something that's sacred, okay? I'm not gonna go down on a girl if I'm not in love with that girl. Now she can go down on me if she wants, that's on her. But I'm not going down on her. Nope. "I gotta know you're clean…"

"I totally agree. I've gone down on ONE guy in my lifetime and I'm 28. Now… I don't care if a guy goes down on me, whatever. I'm not gonna turn it down. I'm not gonna say 'NO YOU CAN'T EAT ME OUT'….what kind of person would I be? If a guy wants to give me head…That's his problem…but just don't expect me to return the favor." WHY are we so alike? She is ME. "But as a guy, what do most guys like?"

"I dunno…every guy is different." I pick up my beer and drink the rest of it. "Like me? I like it from behind but if you're talking to someone like Avery, he'll say he likes it when the girl's on top. We're all different."

"…Nope, see guys like to pull my hair and I'm not with that. And I like being on top too. I like being in control… and I've been told that I'm good at it, so." Her face is so red that her neck looks like it's five thousand shades lighter than her face. "…Okay, this is awkward…"

It is kind of getting out of hand. I'm against cheating but seriously, if I keep talking about something like this with someone that looks like Jo, I might be tempted into it. I don't get my own logic. I don't get how I can think of her as just one of the guys. We're sitting here drinking beer, talking about our sex lives and having a good time. She's one of the guys. I don't get how I can think of her as one of the guys, yet the things I would do to her are so dirty that it should be illegal. I'd never kiss her and mean it. I'd never cuddle with her in the morning. I wouldn't even think to ask her to be my girlfriend. But the THINGS I would DO to her and that BODY….god help me. And the fact that she said she's a squirter? Yeah, that's in the back of my mind as well.

She picks up her phone and holds it in front of her face. "…Holy shit, it's late. I should go…" She gets up off the couch. The thing is…she doesn't even sound like she's rushing. She sounds totally calm. "I have to go Alex, okay?" I grab my phone and check the time. It's not even that late… it's 12:45. She doesn't work tomorrow, so what's the rush? Why did she just get weird all of a sudden? "I'll see you later." She stomps her shoes on her feet.

"Wait Jo… what are you talking about? It's not even late, it's not even one in the morning yet." I get up too. "You don't have to leave. Are you tired or something? You can lay on the couch. I don't want you to leave yet. I thought we were having fun."

"We were, but… I just remembered that I have to…. my hair." She's making up shit now. "I have to get my haircut tomorrow morning and…. I just have to go."

"…It's Jason, isn't it? He wants you home by a certain time and you're late…."

"IT'S NOT. GOD. It's none of your business…. I just want to go home."

"Alright, fine. But you didn't drive. Didn't Stephanie bring you? At least let me drive you home if you're so dead set on leaving right now."

"Leave me alone. Leave me alone, Alex. Okay? Sometimes you just need to leave me alone. Because I get all confused and sometimes I need to be left alone. I want you to leave me alone right now. Because I don't want to ruin this. Let me go home… I….I AM having fun…which is why I need to go."

"That makes no sense."

"It makes perfect sense to me. It doesn't have to make sense to you, it makes sense to me."

"But Jo…"

"LEAVE. ME. ALONE."

"…What if we don't talk about anything? What if we don't talk about sex? Will you stay? What if we go back to looking at songs?"

"…You're not gonna leave me alone, are you?"

"Probably not. Because the last time you acted like this and you got all weird and mad at me, I didn't hear from you for a couple days. And like it or not, you're one of my best friends…so stay."

"Fine." She sits back down. I'm kind of glad that we stopped talking about that. It was getting to be a little steamy and I kept picturing her naked, not gonna lie. I'm not even sex-deprived anymore, I'm just a man. And a girl like Jo is one you'd find in your dreams. One that likes sex just as much as I do? One that's just as freaky as I am? Maybe that's why we clash so much because we ARE so much alike. I don't know… She clears her throat and crosses her legs. "…Hand me your laptop."


	15. Chapter 15

I clear my throat and cross my legs. "…Hand me your laptop." I don't know what I'm going to do with the laptop but I know that it'll be a quick distractor. I just need him to leave me alone and it doesn't seem like he's going to do that, so as long as he's not gonna do that, I have to look at something else other than him. I just don't get it with him. I don't get how when we talk…I feel it. I feel like I'm talking to my soul mate when we talk. I feel so much tension between us, like it's just building up and building up inside me and it's going to explode and I'M going to explode in a big pile of feelings for him. How does he not feel that? How is this so one sided?

How is it that when I see him, I see… my future, if that makes any sense at all? I see more than his shaggy, wavy light brown hair. I see more than his perfect jawline and his perfect lips. I see more than his chiseled body and his muscles. When I look at him, I see someone that's just as crappy as me. I see someone that I should be with, someone that I WANT to be with. I see the person that I want to see when I close my eyes at night and open them up the next morning; the person that I would undoubtedly change my mind about. Him down on one knee in a few years and me, teary-eyed and happy to say yes…that's what I see. I'd be happy with him and I can see that every time I look at him. How is it that I feel something so powerful when I'm in his presence but he doesn't feel anything at all?

And I can feel myself breaking, that's the bad part. I can feel myself tearing at the seams and wanting so badly to stand up on this couch and scream at him to just leave me the hell alone because this is torture. Stephanie was right, of course. This is nothing but cruel, inhumane, unethical torture to me. For me to have to sit here and fake this smile while he talks to me about his wedding…for me to have to sit here and act like I'm not completely turned on by the conversation we just had…for me to ignore the fact that I feel like I have a magnet in my mouth and it's drawn to a magnet in his mouth. But like I said before, I'm freakishly good at hiding things.

Because I don't know what else to do and I don't want to torture myself any longer, I grab my cell phone and go straight to Stephanie's contact. She told me that she wouldn't drink at Joe's so that she'd be okay to drive and come get me, but when she comes to get me, I'm supposed to drop her off over Leah and Heather's and take the car home because she _does _want to drink over their house. I wasn't expected to come home from Alex's this early though so I might just go over to Leah and Heather's too. I need to get drunk. No…matter of fact, I DESERVE to get drunk. I sat in a room for hours with someone that I'm dying to be with and I haven't even said so much as a word to him about how I feel. I think I deserve a drink or two or three or ten.

"H'lo?" Steph answers her phone on the third ring. I hear music playing loudly in the background so yeah…they must still be at Joe's. I'm starting to wish that I had blown Alex off. I mean, I know that if I had blown him off and went out with Steph and the others, I would be sitting at the bar right now wondering if I had missed out on an opportunity to spend alone time with him. I would be sitting there miserable thinking that I might've just missed the chance to grow closer and maybe get him to develop something more than friendly feelings for me. I know I'd be miserable if I had ditched him but at this point, I don't think that being miserable would be anything compared to how I'm feeling right now. I feel like my heart isn't even in my chest anymore. I feel so empty.

"Are you guys done at Joe's yet? Because I'm ready to leave…" As soon as I say that last part, Alex's eyes flicker over to me for a quick moment before they settle back on the beer he's holding in his lap. I'm learning quickly how to read his emotions and tell what his little looks, gasps, grunts and nods mean…and I think this particular look means that he's upset or disappointed or both. Okay, maybe I could've gone inside the bathroom and called Steph to avoid offending him but I didn't. I just really want to get out of here. This is hurting me way too much.

"Actually yeah… we were waiting for you to call." I'm not sure, but I think I just heard Leah scream "HI JO" in the background… but on the off chance that my ears just failed me, I won't tell Steph to tell her I said hi back. "We're waiting for Shane to get his food…he got it to go so it shouldn't be that long. I'll be by to grab you in a little."

"Okay just text me when you're outside." After we exchange our goodbyes, I hang up the phone. I'm so ready to leave that I swear to god I would've walked home in the pouring down rain. If Alex would've let me walk home, I would've. I put my phone back down on the couch cushion beside me and pretend to be really interested in the home screen of his laptop just to avoid looking at him. His screen boasts a picture of him and his fiancée…and I won't even lie, it's perfect. She's wearing a red baseball cap, sitting between his legs and smiling with her eyes closed at the fact that he's behind her, leaning forward, kissing her on the cheek. In all honesty? I don't compare to her, I never could compare to her and I probably never will. She's perfect for him and they look perfect together.

"Can you at least let me know what I did?" No, I was wrong. That look didn't mean disappointment. Clearly it meant that he's pissed off because the tone of his voice doesn't suggest otherwise. He sounds really frustrated and angry with me. "If you're gonna spend the time acting like I just pissed in your cereal, you can at least let me know what I did. I'm getting really sick of it. Every time I think we're having a good time and you're okay one minute, the next minute you freak out and start acting like I killed a puppy. What is it with you?"

"You didn't do anything." I shut his laptop because tears are starting to sting my eyes while I'm steady looking at this goddamn picture of him and his perfect little lover. I put the laptop on the coffee table and run my hand through my hair. "You didn't do anything…alright?"

"Then why the hell are you trying to go home? You're killing me." From the corner of my eye, I see him gritting his teeth. _Hey, that's one more way we're alike. I grit my teeth when I'm irritated too. _"I'm not gonna keep apologizing to you for being a shitty friend. I acknowledged it…I apologized for it…I'm not going to keep saying sorry…especially when I didn't do anything. I'm trying here. You're not that easy to be friends with…"

"I'M not that easy to be friends with?" I'm going to cry in a minute and I really don't want to. I grab a handful of my hair and stare at my split ends so he won't be able to see my face if a tear does happen to fall. "Whatever, Alex… I told you that you didn't do anything and I told you that you aren't a shitty friend…if you feel guilty that's not on me."

"It's just weird how you're claiming that I didn't do anything yet you're acting like I did. We were talking and you said that our talk was awkward and that's fine…we don't have to talk like that anymore. But can you at least give me a damn chance before you decide to go all mute on me like that?" He stressfully combs his fingers through his hair and sighs. "Sometimes I forget that you're not one of the guys…you know? We talk about so many things and it's easy to talk to you about it and I forget that you're not one of the guys…so if I made you uncomfortable by talkin' about sex, my bad."

God he's pissing me off. What part of YOU DID NOTHING WRONG doesn't he understand? Do I have to spell it out for him? And the sex talk wasn't even awkward, that's the thing. I just can't talk like that with somebody that I want. I don't find talking about sex awkward at all so that's not the issue. Still, he doesn't seem to get that I'm not mad at him and that's irritating me. I clench my teeth shut and talk to him through them. "It wasn't. Even. That." I roll my eyes and sigh. "Just fucking drop it… god." I whisper.

"Fine. I'm dropping it." He stands up from the couch and stretches. "You want another beer until you leave?" I shake my head. I don't think I'm going to be able to hold back my tears any longer so I put my hands down on the couch cushions and help myself up onto my feet. I stomp my feet into my shoes again. "Your ride here?" I shake my head again. "Then where the hell are you going?"

"She texted me and said she's right around the corner so I'm just gonna…" I lie and my voice cracks at the end of that. I swallow a lump in my throat and breathe in through my nose, out through my mouth. "I'm gonna go outside and wait. I'll see you on Thursday at work."

"Alright." He mumbles and puts down the pizza box that he just picked up in an effort to start cleaning up. "Can I have like… a high five or a handshake goodbye? Or are you still completely pissed at me?"

"I told you I wasn't mad. It's not a matter of me being mad at you, Alex. I'm not mad. I just…" I lick my lips and purse them into a line, thinking of how I should phrase this. "I want to do something. And I've…I've wanted to do this for like…nearly two weeks now. NEARLY two weeks…" I'm roughly estimating in my head how long it's been since the almost kiss. It's been longer than a week but not exactly two weeks. "And I can't do it. And I'm afraid that if I stay here I'm just gonna keep wanting to do it and if I keep wanting to do it I don't know how long I'm going to be able to NOT do it. So I have to leave. I'm not mad at you or anything. I swear I'm not. I just can't be here anymore with the way I'm feeling."

"Whatever." He scratches his head and stretches his arms out again. "…Why don't you just do it?" He shrugs one shoulder, shakes his head and throws his hands up. "Get it over with."

"…I can't." I squint my eyes and bite my lip. "Do you listen to me at all when I talk? Or does it just go in one ear and out the other? I told you that I can't do it…"

"I'm giving you permission to do it, though."

"You can't just give me permission if you don't know what it is."

"But I know what it is…and I'm giving you permission to do it." He looks down at the ground with guilt written clear across his face. He can't possibly know what it is that I'm talking about. If he knew, he wouldn't tell me to do it. It's not something that I can just get away with doing without suffering the repercussions of doing it. If I could just do it and get away with doing it, I would. But I can't and he can't just give me permission to do it. I bet my life that he doesn't know what it is that I'm talking about. "…Are you gonna do it or not?"

"…No." I shake my head. "You don't know what it is that you're giving me permission for and I… I don't want to do it just because I'm upset about it and you're letting me do it out of pity. I want…. I want to do it and know that it wasn't something one sided. I want you to want it just as bad as I do." I can't believe I'm standing here talking to him with tears in my eyes, refusing to do what I want to do even though I have his permission. I don't think I'd quite like myself much if I did it now, knowing that the only reason I get to do it is because he feels sorry for me.

"I know what it is, Jo. I know what it is." He takes a step closer to me. I look down at the ground to get an idea of our proximity. He's no more than a foot away from me. "And what if I said that I don't care? What if I said that it's been on my mind for a week and two days too… would that change your answer?" I look down at the ground, quiet. "Are you gonna kiss me or not?"

Closing the space between us, I take a step closer to him and like he actually wants to do this too, he steps towards me as well. I stand up on my tiptoes and he leans his head down to make it easier for me. He tilts his head to one side and I tilt mine to the other so we don't bump noses. _Oh god… I didn't think it was possible to want someone this much. _Just like the first time, I can feel his breath against my top lip. I close my eyes and keep my face right where it's at, not wanting to spoil this moment. But after I remain idle for like five seconds, I feel his mouth against mine. _Oh my god his lips are so soft… oh my god, oh my god. _I feel every single emotion in this one instant. I'm happy…so happy. I'm sad…so very sad. And I'm angry. I'm angry because he's getting married and I want him and I can't have him and it's just not far. It's not fair…it's not fair…it's not fair.

We're only standing with our lips together at the moment and I don't care… I don't care if this is all I do. I don't care if this is all we ever do. I'm exploding because this is what I've been longing for. But to further my delight, he opens his mouth which in turn, makes me open mine. His tongue meets mine finally and even his TONGUE is soft. I don't know what to do with my hands… I don't know what to do with them, so I put them on his back. He puts his hands around my waist and pushes his face harder into mine to deepen the kiss. I bring my hands up to the back of his head and curl my fingers through his hair. _This may be my only moment… take advantage. _Hungrily, I push back against him with the same intensity and I massage his tongue with my own. His breath tastes like hard beer…and it's so pleasant.

He pulls away first, breaking the kiss so we can breathe. We're both breathing heavy trying to catch our breath. Both of us open our eyes at the same time. I look at him and I have tears in my eyes and he looks like he just did something he knows he's gonna regret. Softly, he presses his lips to mine in a quick peck. "…You gonna tell me that isn't what you wanted?" He whispers, his voice mimicking a low, voracious growl. I lick my lip so I can have all of him…every speck of his spit, every bit of his lips…inside my mouth. I shake my head to answer his question…and I can't help myself, so I go right back to kissing him.

He cups his hands around my waist and aggressively pushes me back towards the couch. Our feet tangle up in each other's and we both stumble backwards because we don't want to take the time to stop kissing long enough to walk without our lips touching. I collapse backwards and fall on the couch but he doesn't let me hit the couch in a way that'll hurt. He has his arms around my body like I'm weightless to him. Gently, he rests his weight atop of me and I shift and allow him too. _We're not gonna have sex…we're not. I won't allow myself to have sex with him. I'm celibate, remember? _I put my hand flat against his chest and push him hard off me. _That doesn't mean I'm going to give this up, though. I'm not ready to give this up. But no sex._

He keeps his hands on my waist and allows me to switch our positions. I'm actually amazing myself at how long I'm lasting with this kiss. I need to breathe and I know I need to breathe but I'm scared. What if I pull away from him just to catch my breath and he realizes in that moment that what we're doing is horrible and what we're doing is wrong and I don't want him to stop kissing me when he realizes that. I never want to stop kissing him. I put my hand on his face to keep him against my lips and adjust my position so that my legs are on either side of his body and I'm straddling him.

He slides his hands underneath my shirt and rests them against my bare back. He's touching me so gingerly that I'm starting to wonder if he thinks he's gonna break me. His fingertips are just barely grazing my spine, stopping at my bra and tracing themselves back down to the waistband of my pants. His hands repeat that motion for about five more times while mine are tangled all in his hair. I'm trying to restrain myself from pulling his hair too much but I can't. I want him in more ways than this kissing right now and I won't allow myself to have him because I don't want to do anything that's more wrong than what we're already doing…pulling his hair helps my frustration.

I wrap my arms around his neck and rest my elbows in the blades of his shoulders. I tilt my head further to the side so we can kiss deeper and when I do that, he shoves his tongue further into my mouth. Slowly I stroke my fingers through his hair, caressing his scalp and he takes his hands from underneath my shirt and puts them back on my hips. He digs his palms into my hips and pushes me down so that I'm really tightly against his body and I feel something hard against the inside part of my thigh. I think I know what that something is but I don't want to jump to any conclusions. I pull away from his mouth for one second and put my head down to see if what he's holding me against is what I think it is…and it is. I'm so hypnotized by the thoughts that are coming along with it that I can't even concentrate long enough to start kissing him again; I'm just staring at it.

I can make out the outline of the shape of it through his sweatpants. _The things I could do with that. I could do so, so, so many sinful things with that. And I swear I'd make it worth his while. _Breaking my thoughts, he puts his hand underneath my chin and eagerly draws my lips back to his. He sucks on my bottom lip for a second before he starts full blown making out with me again. One of his arms is wrapped around my waist and the other one is resting at his side. I don't even want to talk about what's going on in my underwear right now. I just want to know how he feels about it. Clearly he's enjoying it if he's as hard as I feel that he is…trust me, he's hard as a rock. But that's just a natural reaction for him being a guy.

That says nothing about how he emotionally feels…

**Alex's Point of View.**

At this point, I think it's safe to say that I'm in deep shit. I mean I don't think Jo would tell Iz what's going on and I DAMN sure won't tell her, so she probably won't find out about it but still. I'm tongue-deep in Jo's mouth, she's on my lap and I'm enjoying this more than I'm willing to freely admit. I gotta say that I didn't imagine to be this far into it, though. I was expecting this to happen, be done and I could move on with my life but nope…it's making me think.

I could see it in her eyes that something was bothering her. She wanted to leave for god's sake. And she took it upon herself to tell me that she'd been wanting to do SOMETHING for a while and I just connected the dots. She wanted to kiss me and somewhere in the back of my mind, I think I wanted to kiss her too. I think I wanted to know what it'd be like. I think I wanted to know what I'd be missing out on. Now I'm starting to feel all shitty because I don't want her to think that this is anything more than just a kiss because it's not. I can't let this be more than a kiss. I can't let myself get emotionally attached and I can't allow her to think that just because I'm kissing her now it means that we can go around kissing all the time because that's not the case.

I feel bad for letting her kiss me. I feel bad for kissing her back. I feel bad for wanting her to kiss me and I feel even worse about the fact that it's taking everything in me not to lie her down on this couch and go to work with her. I don't know very many men that would be able to resist her, first of all. It's no internal secret that I think she's beyond hot. She's one of the hottest chicks I've ever came across. But I didn't want to go back to my old ways and I think that's what I've done. I don't even know right now. Is this considered cheating? Even though I wanted this, I also wanted her to initiate the kiss because I THOUGHT that I'd at least feel better about kissing her if it wasn't completely my idea to kiss. I was wrong, by the way.

She's a damn good kisser anyway. She knows just how to let me be in control but also be dominant at the same time and it's quite sexy. I stuff my hands back up her shirt because if I don't put them there then I'll probably end up touching her ass or something worse. Did I mention how soft the skin on her back is? All of her skin is babyishly soft but the skin on her back is like buttermilk. She pulls out of the kiss for a second to move her hair out of the way then goes back to it. We've been at this for like ten minutes now and I haven't even copped a feel yet. I'm proud of myself for that. Even though I'm ashamed for a lot of things I've done tonight, I'm at least proud of that.

Outside, I hear the soft beep of a horn and I'm assuming that's her ride. I kind of don't want her to go. I kind of wish I had at least another hour with her. And then on the other side, I want her to get off my lap right now and get out. I don't know if I can be her friend anymore after this. I really like her and she's a really good friend…but I think this is where I draw the line. We can't be friends. She unhurriedly pulls her face back from mine to stop the kiss for good this time. I reach up and move her hair out of her face. I didn't even think about that. It was out of instinct, like I do it every day. With her legs still straddling me and her hands still around my neck, she looks at me and I look back into her eyes. And I can tell that these are two different emotions between us. I can tell that she just enjoyed the hell out of herself. She's happy. I made her happy. But I'm not. I just fucked up big time.

I can't be her friend anymore. I can't have someone like her around me any longer. I made a commitment to Izzie and I don't want to break that. I know for a fact that I might've just sealed the deal on me and Jo's friendship and I can kiss it goodbye now, but that's a decision I have to make. I have a fiancée and I have a life waiting for me. I can't give that up for an intern.

"…I'll see on Thursday?" Her voice is so soft and mellifluous, like music. She starts to move her legs to get off me but she's moving really slow. I have half a mind to move her myself but I don't want to upset her. I can feel that I'm going to end up being rude to her and I don't want to, but there's no nice way to say that I can't be her friend because shit like this can't keep happening and despite how many times she lies to my face about it, she clearly has feelings for me. "…Will I?" She asks and all I can think about is what color her eyes are. They're clearly brown but the lightest and brightest brown I've ever seen. She's gorgeous and maybe…MAYBE if I wasn't with Iz…

"…Probably not, Jo." I run my hand through my hair and sigh. I'm going to try to be as nice as possible.

"…You don't work on Thursday?" She stands up and fixes herself. "So then I'll see you Saturday. Unless you want to hang out again before that."

"I work on Thursday but…" I stand up as well and put my hand on her shoulder. As gently as I can, I push her and lead her to the door. "This can't keep happening. I'm sorry that it happened in the first place but it did happen and I take full responsibility for it happening but it really can't keep happening, Jo. You know that."

"…Right." She licks her lips, smiles and puts her head down. "Um… we can hang out on Friday if you're not too busy. I… I'm sure Steph wouldn't mind if you came over for a couple hours and I get paid on Friday so—"

I hate to be like this, I really do. But I interrupt her. "No, Jo. We can't hang out. We can't be friends anymore. That's what I meant." Her face goes sullen. "I'm sorry. Actually, I let this go on way longer than it ever should have and I'm sorry for that. I didn't mean to hurt you, but…"

"Wait." She puts her hand up and shakes her head. Her eyes are glistening with tears. God, I didn't mean to do this. I screwed up so bad this time. I'm ALWAYS screwing up. I was born screwing up. But I screwed up BAD this time. "You told me to." Her jaw is trembling. "You gave me all that shit about how you wanted to kiss me too and you told me to and you said it was okay and you… you…. don't wanna be friends now?"

"I'm getting married…"

"Yeah, no shit." She mutters and looks away from me like she can't even stand looking at me. "Alex, I…. I don't want to…not be your friend. I don't want that to happen…"

"But it has to happen." I mumble and open the door. "Look, I'll see you around Wilson… and thanks for helping me tonight."

"…So this is it?"

"It has to be."

"You tell me to kiss you then you tell me that you made a mistake by kissing me back…" I see a tear streak down her cheek. I feel like shit. "Don't ever talk to me again." She pushes past me and stops for a second. "Oh wait… I forgot that's what you want." Her face is so red and so wet with tears. I feel like crap, man. I feel like the biggest piece of crap. "Have a nice…life or whatever." And with that, she leaves.

And with that, I lost a friend.


	16. Chapter 16

"Are you sure they won't mind?" Sniveling, I use the backside of my hand to wipe my face off. I'm not sure how but Steph convinced me to come to Heather and Leah's to have a drink with her. I was going to go anyway back before I spent ten minutes making out with Alex but after the rejection he just put me through, all I want to do is go home and lie down. I didn't want to but the second I got in the car with Steph, I broke down. I broke DOWN and I mean that in the most literal sense of the word. I was crying so hard that I gagged myself and I almost threw up. I haven't cried that hard since I got arrested last year. I couldn't even get a handle on myself. Steph had to pull the car over at the end of Alex's driveway to console me and even that didn't work. I thought I was okay to make it without crying until I got home to do it in the privacy of my bedroom but the second I got into the car, I lost it.

I just don't understand. I don't believe in God and I haven't believed in God since I was sixteen years old… but if there IS a God, is he really that cruel? I stopped believing in God when the son of a bitch made it possible for a little girl to be beaten and raped the way he let me. Maybe I'm just a tough critic but I didn't understand it then and I don't understand it now. I was a little girl and even at sixteen, I still had my innocence. I didn't do anything that I recall that could've deserved for him to let that happen to me. I swear I was a golden child. I did my homework, I made straight As, I was in the gifted program at school, I didn't go out and get high and drink like most teenagers my age. I never sass-mouthed my foster parents, I never even so much as told them "no". I was a picture perfect child and I really tried to be because when you get kicked out of so many foster homes, you start to learn how to behave yourself so you can hopefully stay and when you're a teenaged kid in foster care, they usually look for any reason to throw you out…so I tried HARD to stay.

I was sixteen and I hadn't even been kissed yet! Yet…someone higher than me like "God" decided that I could wake up one morning and get myself a bowl of cereal because the person in the house that I knew would protect me was gone at work and she didn't make me the breakfast she usually made me on the weekends. She wasn't there and to this day, I believe if she had been, I would've been okay. But no. I sat at that table to eat my makeshift breakfast and he came downstairs. And he sat down and he ate a bowl of cereal with me. And he asked me if I was excited for school to start. And I said yes. And he asked me if I had planned on getting a boyfriend in my sophomore year. And I told him I wasn't interested in boys, I was interested in school. And he asked me if I liked girls. And I said I didn't think I did, because at that point, I was still unsure of my sexuality. I found boys attractive but not to the point that I would lie down and have sex with them. I had never seen a girl that I found attractive at that point but I still didn't want to completely rule out the possibility of being bisexual.

He asked me if I was a virgin and I told him that I was, because I was. I was still innocent then. And he said that the reason why I was unsure of my sexuality was because I had never had sex before. And I got up because the conversation was making me uncomfortable and I had a copy of The Great Gatsby that I really wanted to start reading. I went to my room and lay in my bed and started to read because I had nothing else better to do. He came inside and sat down on the bed and he took my book off me and put it on my nightstand. And he told me that he didn't want "gay daughter" so he was gonna "make me sure of myself." I said "okay" because I didn't know what he meant. But he started kissing me on my lips and I got the picture and I started to cry because I trusted him, you know? I trusted that he wouldn't have done anything like that and I felt really safe with them. They were the longest foster family that I had been with. He pushed me down on the bed and held my hands to the side while he kissed me and I screamed. To this day, I still don't know how I screamed like that. I've never heard myself scream like that since.

When he took his hands away from my hands, he forced all his weight on me so I couldn't get up. It was pretty easy for him; I was a pretty skinny kid. I probably only weighed about 100 pounds, no more than that. And he had to have been about 300 pounds. I remember screaming and praying to God that he wouldn't do this to me but he did…and he did it to me for nearly two hours. And I told him that I was gonna tell but he hit me and he kept hitting me and he told me that he was gonna do it again and again and again until HE got tired of it. And I left and I took that car of mine and I never saw him again.

My point is that there is no such thing as a God and even if he did exist, he's a selfish bastard that likes to watch little girls get raped by their foster fathers, so it's not a surprise to me that he likes to watch me get my fucking heart broken into tiny pieces by the same selfish fucker over and over again. I refuse to believe that somebody so "holy" could be so cruel so it's comforting to me to think that he doesn't even exist. Call me crazy but since I don't believe in God, I often find myself praying to science…hehe. I thought that was funny.

"I told them you were coming to chill with us. Leah said she didn't mind." Steph hands me more tissues. "Just calm down, okay? You're gonna have fun with us and you'll forget all about him. He's a jackass…" She throws the gearshift in park and turns to me. "No more crying over him. Shake him off and have fun for a couple of hours. It'll make you feel better." She pulls her sleeve down and covers her hand with it. She starts wiping my face off for me and I politely push her away. I appreciate the gesture but I don't need her help. I put my hands over my face and rub my eyes hard. "You cool now?"

"Mhm." I nod, sniff and clear my throat. I open up the car door and step out of it. _This is Heather and Leah's place? Wow… I could only dream of living in a place like this. _I look at the exterior of the house in its entirety. It's not very big but it's decent sized for two people to be living in it. It's about two stories high and it's all made out of brick. It looks like it might have been a duplex at one point but I'm not sure. I fold my arms across my chest and walk up the front steps, following Steph. I think Steph must've told them that we were outside or coming or something because she doesn't even ring the doorbell, she just opens up the front door and walks right inside and I instinctively follow her.

As soon as I step inside the house, my ears are filled with the sound of loud music and the floor is shaking from the bass of the song that's playing. I follow Steph through a narrow hallway back towards a living room. It smells like Clorox bleach in the house. It's not necessarily a bad smell. The house isn't dirty, either. There's a pile of clothes sitting the steps and shoes strung from one end of the hallway to the other but that's it. Oh, and they could stand to run a vacuum cleaner across the carpet but again, I'm not judging. Heather's sitting on the couch with a red cup in her hand and her nose buried in her phone. Leah's ass is sticking out of a cabinet while she's rummaging through it looking for something. Shane's sitting in a recliner with a Styrofoam container in his lap. It looks like he's eating chicken wings or some other kind of meat with messy sauce on it. If they're the wings that came from Joe's then they're amazing and when he's not looking, I might steal one.

"Jo!" Heather sounds really excited to see me which makes me smile because…well, after getting flat out rejected, it's nice to have somebody that actually appreciates my presence. "You want a cup?" She puts her phone and her cup down on the coffee table in front of their couch and grabs the bottle of liquor from the side of the couch. I nod my head. I don't even care what it is that she's trying to get me to drink. I just need to be drunk. "You want pineapple juice or orange juice for a chaser?"

"What is it?" I take the bottle of rum off her to look at it. It's coconut flavored Calico Jack. "…Gimme the pineapple juice." I take it off her and grab a cup. I pour the pineapple juice so the cup is half full and fill the other half with rum. I swish my cup around to mix it as best as I can without a spoon and take a long, drowned out, much needed sip. It's starting to burn my stomach with how much I chugged down, but whatever. I'm trying to be pissy drunk by the end of the night.

"Damn Jo… take it to the head why don't you?" Steph sits down on the couch, taking the seat I planned to sit in. I'll sit on the floor for all I care though. I put my half-drunken cup down on the table and sit down with my back against the couch. I pull my knees into my chest and dust off the rest of my first cup. "Jo I'm serious… chill out. I don't feel like spending my night in the emergency room with you."

"I know my limit, Steph." I mumble and fill my cup back up with more rum this time than pineapple juice. "I'm trying to get so fucked up that I don't remember tonight." I take her advice and sip my current cup this time instead of chugging it like I did the first one.

"I don't think I ever met someone that INTENTIONALLY got so fucked up that they don't remember the night before." Leah finally takes her head out of the cabinet she was rummaging through with a deck of cards in her hand. "Poker?"

"Deal me in." Shane sucks some of whatever he was eating off his fingers and slides out of the chair he was just sitting in and onto the floor. I scoot over towards the coffee table because that seems to be where we're going to play at. Heather sits beside me and Steph sits on the other side of me. Leah sits across the table next to Shane and starts shuffling the cards. I used to be really good at poker but I haven't played since med school. I'm not sure if I'm good anymore. See, us Harvard kids didn't have many ways to have fun on campus because if we did the wrong thing, we'd get kicked out in a heartbeat. So the most honest way for us to have fun was to sit around in my friend Kaitlyn's room and play a big ass game of poker. "What made you decide to come out and hang with the big kids?" Shane asks me with a playful yet douchebaggish tone in his voice.

"I dunno." I shrug my shoulders and lie to him because I'm not drunk enough to have forgotten about the fact that I just hardcore made out with the man of my dreams and got hardcore rejected at the same time. I don't feel like talking about Alex. "What are we betting?" I start gathering my cards up as Leah deals them out. "I'm broke as hell so we can't bet money. We can bet like… swap monkey or something." I take a sip of my drink.

"We're all broke as hell. We're interns." Leah keeps on dealing out the cards. "But I swear this paycheck on Friday is about to be nice. I put in like 80 hours." She exhausts the cards we're supposed to have and sits flat on her ass. Is it bad that I don't even know what I'm going to do with my first paycheck? Apparently Steph's dad paid all the bills for the month before she even asked me to move in, so nothing needs paid. We're interns so we don't get paid much, but I think I have at least a thousand bucks coming to me on Friday, AFTER they take out taxes. That may seem like a lot of money and it is…especially for me. And the only reason I'll be able to have all my money this month is because I don't have to pay anything this month. So what am I gonna do with the money? I should probably just save it or something.

"Why don't we just play strip poker? It's cheap." Steph suggests in all seriousness. I played strip poker once in my life and I thought it was boring. Maybe I thought it was boring because I didn't even have to strip. I think (if I remember correctly) the concept of the game is to take off some of your clothes every time you lose a round. I never lost so I didn't have to strip…and then it was just me sitting around with a bunch of butt-naked people and it was awkward.

"No thanks." I put my cards down. "I'd rather just watch if you guys are gonna do all that." They're all looking at me like they're annoyed. "…Well I never lose in poker and if I don't lose then I won't strip and it'll be weird! Plus… I don't know if I'm cool with Shane being the only dude here." And I'm serious about that. He's the only boy and I'm not sure if I' too keen on him seeing me naked if I do happen to lose. I'm cool with Steph seeing me naked, I'm cool with Leah and Heather seeing me naked because they have all the same parts as me…but Shane? I don't know.

"You really know how to suck the fun out of something." Heather mumbles.

"…I just…" I sigh and pick my cards back up. "Okay. I'll play." I lean across the table just slightly and glare at Shane. "But I swear to GOD if you tell anyone that you've seen me naked, I WILL kill you." He just winks at me. "I fucking mean it. I'm not bullshitting."

"You worry too much. We're all friends here." He snatches up his own hand of cards and shakes his head, dismissing me. I roll my eyes and spread out my five cards, keeping them close to me. My strategy is to fold before I have to take any of my clothes off. That usually works for me. But this time, I'm playing with some really good bluffers.

**Alex's Point of View.**

"What do you mean you kissed her?" I feel kind of bad driving over here at this hour of the night just to bother her with my problems but I literally don't have anyone else. I can't talk to Cristina because she gives me shitty advice anyway. Talking to Avery is a NO because if I tell him what I just did, he won't get it. He's in a happy marriage and he wouldn't understand what I'm trying to say. And the only other person I I could actually confide in is the REASON I'm so messed up right now. So even though it's almost 2:00 in the morning on a work night, I drove all the way out to Mere's just to talk.

"Exactly what I mean when I say I JUST KISSED JO." I run my hands through my hair and sigh. I'm so stressed out. This is literally the LST thing I need right now. I'm set to get married in a couple months and up until tonight, I was thoroughly convinced that I'm HAPPY in my relationship. Not that I'm all of a sudden unhappy with Iz or anything like that because I'm not, it's just that Jo's making me think and I DON'T WANT TO think. I don't want to have to think that maybe getting married is a mistake. I don't want to have to think that maybe I should wait to marry Iz until I'm more sure. I don't want to think and Jo just made me think so much. "I don't even know Mere." I hold my head in my hands and shake my head. "It wasn't even a kiss… it was a couple kisses…it was a make-out session."

"So wait… explain this to me again." I'm already sitting at her kitchen table so she leans against it and looks directly at me. "You kissed her or she kissed you? Because there's a difference. Was it mutual?" She closes her eyes and shakes her head. "Alex, I thought you said you could control yourself around her. I thought you said you weren't into her. I thought you said that you had absolutely NO desire to be with her…. and now you show up at my doorstep at two in the morning to tell me you made out with the girl? Which one is it?"

"I don't know!" I pick up a fake wax apple from the basket in the middle of the table and swing my legs. "We were having fun and we started talking about sex and it was turning her on…I could tell she was getting turned on and so was I. But she cut the conversation off so I thought we were good! But then she acted all weird and she wanted to leave and I dunno…something in me wouldn't let her just leave like that. And I could tell that she wanted to kiss me. And I was so tired of fighting it. I'm tired of acting like I'm not attracted to her because I am. I really am. Ever since the tunnel incident, I've been thinking about getting her in bed and I wasn't gonna lie to her about it because I've already been a shitty enough person towards her. So I kissed her back. It was mutual."

"If you're falling out of love with Izzie, don't you think you should tell her?"

"But I'm NOT, that's the thing." I sigh again. I'm about to just go the hell home. I don't like talking about my feelings and I thought that talking to Mere would make me feel better but it's making me feel worse. I haven't felt this shitty in a long, long, long, LONG time. "I don't love Jo and that's where we clash. She thinks I want to be with her when all I want to do is bang her." I grit my teeth. "What is it with chicks? Why do they automatically think that a kiss means I'm going to drop everything and be with them? And okay, I guess I care about the girl's feelings because I don't have it in me to tell her that I only want to have sex with her. So I kicked her out and I told her that was it."

"You keep telling yourself that, Alex." She yawns but keeps on talking to me. "If it's working for you, then keep telling yourself that. But it's only a matter of time before you get tired of lying to yourself."

"You think I'm lying?"

"I know you're lying because I know you." She shrugs like it's not even a big deal at all to her. "I think you're trying to tell yourself that you don't care about Jo. I think you're trying to convince yourself that you two are just friends when you know damn well that couldn't be further from the truth. I don't think you love her. You're not lying about that. But I think you're feeling something for that girl and you're afraid that if you KEEP feeling something for her, whatever you're feeling for the intern is going to overtake the love you have for Izzie and you're trying so hard not to let that happen that you're killing yourself. I think you do have feelings for Jo…and I think deep down, you know you do."

"You're wrong, Mere. I don't feel anything for her besides the desire to get in her pants." I rub the bridge of my nose. "If anything I'm afraid that if I stay around the girl, I'm gonna cheat on my fiancée with her. THAT is what I'm afraid of."

"Well you need to get your shit together then. If I'm wrong like you say I am and all you want to do is sleep with her, then you need to get it together. Because of course I'm on your side, but I'm gonna tell you when you're wrong. And you are SO wrong to do this to her."

"I'm not doing anything to her! I already frickin' told her that this isn't anything between us! She's being stupid with it. I'm not doing anything."

"Oh Alex, it wouldn't kill you to stop being a pompous asshole for a minute. You say you care about the poor girl's feelings yet you don't mind being a pulsating DICK towards her? If you know that you don't want to be with her then you had no business kissing her."

"…You suck as a best friend."

"I'm not gonna nurture and coddle you anymore. We're not interns anymore."

"Yeah yeah yeah." I close my eyes and rub my temple because I'm getting a headache just talking to her. "So do you think I'm making the right decision by cutting off all contact with her?"

"I do." She nods. "Because if you feel like you can't restrain yourself around her and you don't want to cheat on Izzie, then you don't need to be around her. It sucks for her but it's the right decision for you."

I sigh again. "…Thanks Mere."


	17. Chapter 17

I don't feel like being at work today. I don't have my hangover anymore and I'm not overly tired or anything like that because I've already had ample time in my off day yesterday to recover and catch up on my sleep. I just don't want to be here around other people. The only person I can even stand being around is Stephanie and she's on trauma with Kepner and Hunt today which means I won't see any of her at all because she'll be so busy. I spent the entire day in bed yesterday by the way. I literally did nothing but watch TV and pop headache pills for my hangover. I did some self-discovery while I was nursing my hangover, too. Like for example, I didn't know how much I liked crappy, redundant talk shows and crummy reality TV. Dr. Phil is my favorite and I despite how pathetic I felt, I couldn't bring myself to turn off that TV show about the Kardashians. While internally I'm glad to be back at work practicing medicine, I still kind of wish that I was home in my bed watching a couple more hours of television.

I'm never drinking again either. My plan was to drink so much at Heather and Leah's that I wouldn't be able to remember the night but I still remember everything vividly and the only thing that downing five cups of Calico Jack got me was a headache and a toilet full of vomit. I remember spending half the night with Alex and making out with him for what seemed like forever before he basically kicked me out and told me he didn't want to be my friend anymore. I remember crying like a baby in front of Steph when I got in the car. I remember going to Heather and Leah's and drinking more than half of my weight in rum. I vaguely remember being shirtless and bottomless sitting around the coffee table playing strip poker. I remember having to slap Shane out of staring at me because he literally almost drooled at the sight of me in my bra. He moved on to Steph after I slapped him. Then I remember going home and throwing completely up in the toilet and that's all.

To make matters a little bit better for me, it helps that I'm still apparently banned from Pediatrics. I don't want to work on Peds because I don't want to be around him and I damn for sure don't want to take orders from him even though he's my superior. I think I might be developing a slight hatred for him. I'm on General with Dr. Bailey and Dr. Grey today and even though I hate General with every bone in my body, it's better than being on Peds. It's way better than being on Peds. I haven't even been at work for two hours yet and already Dr. Grey and Dr. Bailey have been piling on the scut. So far, I've scheduled six consults, four surgeries, three outpatient procedures and seven CTs. Don't ask me when I became someone's flunky and personal assistant because when I woke up this morning, I'm sure that I was still a surgical intern.

All I've been thinking about today is avoiding Alex at all cost, staying out of Medusa's way and going to see Brynn. I haven't even so much as heard Alex's name yet today so I'm succeeding in that aspect, Dr. Grey isn't really being her usual Medusa self towards me today so that's another plus for me and if I time it right, I can go up on the Peds floor to see Brynn while everyone else is on lunch, that way I still won't have to see him. It sucks that I have to plan my entire day around him. Everything comes back to him. I don't want to be on Pediatrics because of him. I can't go up and see Brynn whenever I want to because of him. I can't roam the hallways to go places without looking over my shoulder because he might be there. It's all about him and I don't know how much longer I can take this.

Anyway, Dr. Grey wants me to round on one of her patients but I don't have my own code to get into the electronic chart system and she doesn't trust me with her code yet, so I had to go and grab the paper chart from the nurses' station. I got the chart and it doesn't look like his lactate is in a good range so I have to go find Dr. Grey and ask her if she should do an exploratory lap. I walk down the hallway of the ICU flipping through the pages of the chart. This really doesn't seem right to me. If the patient's been here for two days in the ICU like his chart says he's been, then why hasn't anybody caught this before me?

As I'm flipping through the pages of the chart, I don't look up to make sure nobody's in front of me and I pay for that. I collide with someone taller than me and the pages of the chart I was holding clatter all over the floor along with the pages and the clipboard that belong to whoever I ran into. _Well isn't this day just off to a positive start? _Immediately, I drop down to my knees to pick up the mess I caused and I start to apologize. "I'm so sorry… I wasn't looking where I was going and I—" The person I ran into is on their knees with me picking up the mess of papers and up until now, all I could see was the small feet that are inside pink New Balance sneakers but when she puts her head down to help me, I catch a glimpse of perfect, yellowish blonde locks. _No fucking way._

"It's fine, I wasn't looking where I was headed to either. I have a habit of doing that." Of fucking course her voice is all soft and sweet and perfect to match her perfect face, perfect body, perfect EVERYTHING. When we both get what belongs to us gathered up in a neat pile, we stand up on our feet at the same time. "It wasn't your fault." I lift my head up because she might think it's rude that I'm not looking at her. _Oh my goodness… _She's so pretty! There's no way in hell I compete with her! She has the biggest, round chocolate brown eyes and her shoulder-length blonde hair is shinier than my hair could ever be. She's smiling and her teeth are so perfect and white and brighter than my entire future. And she's tall and curvy and her entire body is just… oh my god. She's like a senior cheerleader dating the quarterback and I'm the freshman band geek that wants to date the quarterback. That's the only way I can describe the difference between me and her.

"Still… I should've been paying attention." I close the chart I was looking at and shove it underneath my armpit for safekeeping. "Again… I'm sorry. I'm a little bit clumsy sometimes."

"…You're… You're Wilson, aren't you?" She's still smiling at me and she's so sweet and genuine. I have half a mind to tell her no, I'm not. I don't want to tell her that I'm the Jo that Alex wants her to meet. She'd probably be expecting someone prettier than the little brunette girl she just ran into. I should tell her that Leah's me. Leah seems like she'd be more Alex's type anyway. Leah would be a better Jo than me. "Jo's your name? Boy, this will suck if I'm wrong…"

She's funny too. No fair. Well, she's funny so I crack a smile. "Yeah." I adjust the chart underneath my arm and politely extend my hand out to her. I should be an award winning actress for being able to be civil with her. I just want to run away. "Jo Wilson… nice to meet you." She grabs my hand and shakes it with so much excitement.

"You're so cute." She tucks a piece of her hair behind her ear with her free hand and keeps shaking my hand. "Isobel Stevens, but you can call me Izzie." She takes her hand away from mine and I watch her eyes gloss over me from head to toe. If I was a hermit crab, I'd totally go back into my shell right now. "I'm Alex's fiancée." She's still looking at me like she's giving me a thorough examination. "He's always talking about you, but he never mentioned how adorable you were… You're the one that helped him pick out our wedding song, aren't you?" Looking down at the ground, I nod my head. "Thank you so much. If I had left the song choosing completely up to him, I would've been stuck dancing to some mainstream radio song. Excellent song choice"

"You're welcome. What'd he go with? I know he was having some trouble choosing from a couple…" _Mental note to dress nicer at work. _Granted there isn't much I can do with baby blue scrubs, but my hair could've been nicer. It's in a low ponytail that's all messy down my back.

"He was going to go with some song called Wanted but he said something about that song having a different meaning for him…so he went ahead with Collide by Howie Day."

"Collide is beautiful… I'm glad he went with something like that."

"No, I'M glad you helped him." She laughs softly with her mouth covered, like she's a princess or something that only does things the proper way. "Alex isn't the most sensitive guy."

"That's what I'm here for." I force a smile and fix my ponytail.

She gasps like I just did the greatest thing she's ever seen in her life. "Oh my gosh, is that your real hair? Your ponytail is so long and thick… like an actual pony's tail." She seems really fascinated and it's apparent to me why. I think Alex mentioned something about her having cancer and how she used to have long hair like me but it's still growing back from her chemotherapy. I'm just guessing that's why she's so interested in my hair, because most people just act like it's nothing.

"Oh…" I reach back and wrap my hand around all of my hair. "Um… yeah. It's all my real hair but it's… I just haven't had a cut in a few years that's why it's so wild." I clear my throat and think of something to say that'll lead her to believe that I'm not in the mood to just cry over the fact that I want her fiancé and I can't have him. "It's nice to finally meet you. This should've happened sooner, but… between my busy little intern schedule and Alex's schedule and your schedule…" I'm also a pretty good liar, in addition to everything else I'm good at.

"No, I totally get it. We're all busy people." Something tells me that Alex hasn't told her that him and me are no longer friends. I don't know why he would've but at this point, I'm really wishing that he did. I just feel like if he had told her that he isn't speaking to me any longer, she probably would have avoided this conversation with me and I wish I didn't have to talk to her and lie the entire time. "Alex seriously talks about you all the time." _He does? _"You're apparently one of his really good friends. Which is kind of a big deal because… I guess you've noticed that Alex can be hard to deal with sometimes."

_You have no idea. _"He and I are just very much alike and yeah… he can be pretty hard to deal with at times but he's… he's a lot of fun when you get to know him." _Speak of the devil and the devil shall appear… _Off in the distance, I see him coming up behind her. "Shit." I mouth to myself and put my head down. She didn't notice that I just cussed, thankfully.

"Hey…there you are." He comes up behind her and puts his hand against her shoulder like he's been looking for her all morning. "I went up to see you in Derm and you weren't there…" I squint my eyes to show my distaste towards him while he kisses her on her cheek and completely ignores the fact that I'm standing here. Okay, I know that she's in fiancée and all, but I can't help but feel like he's toying with her in front of me just to show me that he doesn't want me. Maybe I'm just being sensitive though. "…What's goin' on here?" He sounds chipper but I can't tell if he's faking or if he's trying to disguise the fact that he's worried. He probably thinks I told her about our kissing incident.

"I ran into your little friend here." She motions towards me and I plaster a very fake, forced smile on my face. I have that aching feeling in my throat that I get every time I'm about to cry. "How come you didn't tell me how sweet and cute she is? She's a sweetheart, babe." He nods like he wants her to shut up about me and gives her a kiss on her lips. "What were you looking for me for?"

"I just came up to see you for a couple minutes because I'm between surgeries." He's looking at her like she's everything in his world. I would sell my soul for him to look at me like that… "Am I not allowed to miss you and want to come see you? You act like it's a crime to love my wife." Again, he kisses her but deeper this time, with more meaning. My stomach is starting to hurt a little bit.

"I'm not your wife yet…" She smiles and wipes his bottom lip with her thumb.

"That can't happen soon enough…" He smirks and another kiss and another knot my stomach ties itself into. I have to go.

I pretend to look down at the watch on my wrist and check the time. Even though they're not even paying attention to me anymore, I still find it necessary for me to explain that I'm leaving. So I sweep a chunk of my ponytail that fell over my shoulder away and clear my throat. "I have to get this chart to Dr. Grey, so…" I take the chart from underneath my armpit and glance up. They're still practically making out with each other. Her arms are around his waist and he's holding onto her like she's his lifeline. _Why does he insist on doing this to me? Like okay, I get it…you don't want me. He doesn't have to do this to me, I already get the picture. _I hold onto the chart and politely brush past them even though I'm dying to just cry.

I don't understand why he felt the need to do that. It's like he doesn't think that he's already put me through enough humiliation and disappointment and rejection for one lifetime. No, he decides to hold an unnecessary make out session with his fiancée in front of me, as if I don't already get the very clear picture that HE'S GETTING MARRIED AND HE DOESN'T WANT ME. Even though she clearly doesn't know that I was just making out with her husband two nights ago, I'm still embarrassed. I haven't felt embarrassment and humiliation like I've felt within the last two days…ever. I don't recall ever being this humiliated and I don't like it.

And it doesn't help that she's super nice and extremely hard to hate. She's so nice… and she's caring. She called me cute and she cared enough to introduce herself and she complimented my hair. Call me crazy but I swear it would've been easier had she yelled at me for bumping into her. I'm really wishing that she would've just screamed at me and called me a stupid intern and told me that I can't do anything right. Hating her would be so much simpler than loving her. I mean, I don't know… I guess I'm glad that Alex's wife is someone nice. He deserves nice.

I sigh and yank the door to the ICU open to give this chart to Dr. Grey. I was supposed to round on this patient by myself but she's in his room which indicates to me that she already rounded on him and I'm probably in trouble…all because I got caught up with Alex and his perfect little wife. "…Sorry I'm late, Dr. Grey. I had a run in with—" I hand her the chart just as she interrupts me.

"It's fine." She snatches the chart from me and goes back to checking the patient's vitals. "I need you to do me a favor. I need you to run down to the daycare and see what they're paging me for. If it's not important, let them know that I don't have time. Tell them I'm in surgery. And when you come back, I'll be in OR 7. I might need you to scrub in."

"Okay." Again, don't ask me when I became someone's personal assistant, because I SWEAR when I woke up this morning I was a surgical intern. "…And what if whatever the daycare wants is important…then what?"

"Then you call me in OR 7 and I'll let you know how to handle it. Wilson, go."

"Alright then."

**Alex's Point of View.**

"Mmm… babe, you haven't kissed me like that in a while." When we pull out of the kiss we were sharing, she looks at me like she might've been dying for me to kiss her like that for a while. Funny how I haven't kissed my own fiancée like that in a long time but I was just kissing Jo like that two nights ago. And you what just scared the shit out of me? The fact that I _did _just kiss Izzie like that and… I didn't feel anything. Nothing at all. I didn't feel that little spark I usually feel when I kiss Iz, I didn't feel like I needed to kiss her more after we pulled away… I didn't feel anything. And that scares me. But when I kissed Jo…. I did.

"Well… I missed kissing you like that." I wink at her and keep my arms around her. I do still love her though. At least that hasn't changed. I can still tell that I love her and I can tell that I want to marry her. Maybe I'm just having an off day with the whole not-feeling-anything while I kiss her. "What were you and Jo talking about?" When I first approached the two of them, I was a little skeptical that maybe Jo told her that we kissed. But when I got closer and closer I realized that A, Jo wouldn't do that. She was heartbroken that I told her we couldn't be friends anymore and I don't think she'd want to relive that kiss through telling my fiancée about it. And B, if she had told Izzie, Izzie wouldn't have kissed me like she just did. She would've been too pissed to even look at me.

"Oh, we ran into each other and I helped her pick up her things. We were talking about the song and stuff." She reaches up and pulls something out of my hair. "She's a sweet girl, Alex… Why don't you invite her over more? She seems like a nice kid."

"She is." I scratch the back of my head and look around. "Jo's nice and stuff and she's funny but…" I shove my hands into the pockets of my white coat. "I didn't get the chance to tell you that we had a fall out. We're really not on speaking terms anymore."

"What happened?"

"We just had a disagreement about something."

"Like…"

"It was just a silly little argument, Iz. You don't need to worry about it." But I know Izzie and I know that worrying about it is ALL she's going to do today. I should probably just tell her but I don't want to tell her in a way that's gonna make her completely hate Jo because even though we're not on talking terms right now, it's possible that we could become friends again sometime and on the off chance that we do become friends again, I don't really need my future wife to hate my friend. I'll just lie a little bit…but I'm lying for a good reason. I'm trying to protect Jo…that's a good reason, isn't it? "When me and Jo first became friends, I didn't tell her that I was engaged so she had a little crush on me at first… and she was a little bit sad when I finally told her about you. And we had a little argument about that last night because… she was…. She was denying that she had feelings for me. We just had a disagreement."

"Well do you have feelings for her too?" She crosses her arms and taps her foot like she's just waiting for me to drop the bomb on her. First of all, NO I don't have feelings for Jo. And second of all, even if I DID have feelings for her, why the hell would I just come out and tell Izzie about them? "Seriously Alex." She looks pissed.

"No." I don't know how much longer I can say that with a straight face. "Jo's just a friend, Iz. I swear." I'm not into lying to Iz… and I think that's what I'm doing. I don't really know if what me and Jo did is considered cheating. I always used to think that cheating wasn't cheating unless you actually had sex with another person, but if I feel this horrible about making it seem like I didn't kiss Jo…is it cheating? I'm lying to Iz, I'm feeling bad about lying to Iz and I'm feeling even worse about the fact that I'm pinning it all on Jo just to save my ass. I think I'm already at the point of cheating. "I have a case up in the NICU that I need to get on. I'll see you later." I lean down and kiss her on her forehead. "Love you."

"Love you too, babe." She doesn't sound like she meant that like she usually means it, but she said it and I guess that counts.

**X X X **

I wish I had somebody other than Mere to talk to. It's not that Mere doesn't give me good advice because she does; it's just that I need somebody that'll tell me exactly what to do in this situation. I'm stuck between a rock and a hard place with this. Okay, I'm done lying to myself like Mere said I was. I'm done with that. The truth of the matter is this: I love Izzie but I also kind of like Jo. I don't love Jo, I just LIKE her. I like her in the sense that she makes me laugh, she always knows the right thing to say to me and I don't feel like I have to act like I'm somebody different around her. With Jo… I can be me and she just understands. I don't have to act like I want a big church wedding with Jo. I don't have to act like I'm into being all domestic with Jo. With Jo, I'm a shitty person that came from nothing to make myself something and she gets it because she came from nothing and she knows what that's like. I used to spend time thinking that the fact that she and I are so much alike is the reason that we clash, but what if she and I being alike is actually the reason that we're perfect for each other?

Izzie on the other hand… Iz is who I'm meant to be with, I think. It took a while for me and Iz to get it right and now that we've finally got it… I don't know if I should just throw it all away. It's been a long, uphill battle for Iz and I to get to where we're at right now. I cheated on her a bunch of times when we were younger, she cheated on me and dumped me twice. We were broken up for a while until we just figured out that I didn't want to be with anybody else that wasn't her and she didn't want to be with anyone that wasn't me. And after we both realized that we wanted each other, she got sick. Her cancer took a lot out of me and it was so emotionally draining to deal with the fact that I could've lost her on more than one occasion. The cancer's gone now and we've figured out how to make the pieces fit. Everything's falling into place and now Jo came along.

I don't know what to do about any of this. I'm staying with Izzie but staying with Izzie means that I have to completely cut Jo out…and it DOES mean that, because if I just stay Jo's friend while I'm with Izzie, I can't promise that won't cheat on her with Jo. And that's not the kind of husband I want to be. I want to be in the kind of relationship where we're totally committed to one another. And let's just say for argument's sake that I left Izzie for Jo… I would feel like the biggest piece of shit on this earth. Imagine that. I stick with my fiancée through cancer and cheating and lying and cancer, but I leave her because some little intern is making me question whether or not my love for Izzie is built on something pure. Just imagine that.

I feel like I'm caught between choosing what the RIGHT thing to do is and what I want to do. What I WANT to do is the wrong thing to do but the right thing to do isn't necessarily what I want. I think… I mean, I THINK that I want to be with Jo. I think that I want to be able to hang out with her and kiss her and hug her and just be with her without feeling like I'm betraying Iz. That's what I THINK I want. But I know the right thing would be for me to stick with fiancée because even though we're not married yet, I DID make a commitment to her when I put that ring on her finger.

This is just so hard. This is the hardest thing I've ever had to do and that's saying a lot. I watch little kids and babies die on a daily basis for a living…I've been through some pretty hard shit. But choosing between what I think I want and what I should do is without a doubt the hardest thing I've ever done.

Well, until I figure all this shit out for certain, I'm just gonna keep saying away from Jo.

**Jo's Point of View.**

Fuck this day. Literally, FUCK this day. First I end up on my least favorite service EVER where I end up being someone's bitch instead of practicing medicine. Then I'm practically forced into watching the man I think I might possibly love make out with his very perfect soon-to-be wife, where I find out that his fiancée is actually the nicest, prettiest person on the freaking planet. And now, I somehow got stuck in daycare. I was supposed to just be down here for a couple minutes to find out why the hell they were paging Dr. Grey but NOPE. Turns out Dr. Grey's kid had some sort of outburst where she wanted her mother so when I called Dr. Grey in OR 7 to see if this could be considered an emergency or not, she declared that Zola wanting attention was considered an emergency and guess who got volunteered to spend time with the kid? I'll give you a hint, her name is two letters and it rhymes with "So."

I don't know how many times I have to tell people that I AM NOT CUT OUT TO DEAL WITH SMALL CHILDREN ON A PERSONAL LEVEL before they take me seriously and stop giving me the daunting task of dealing with small children on a personal level. So far, I've been forced into coloring pictures, I've had my hair pulled and I've been serenaded by one of the cardiac care nurse's son. One good thing came out of me being down here though; I guess Dr. Robbins ordered that my kid should be around other children because she doesn't know how to socialize, so I got to see Brynn for half an hour. She wasn't allowed to be down here for too long, just until more kids were rounded on so they could spend time in the playroom. More kids are in the playroom in a sterile environment so that's where Brynn currently is.

She recognized me, by the way. I don't know why the fact that when she saw me she called me "Doh Doh!" made me cry. I still haven't quite figured that out. I didn't know I was that emotional to cry when a child recognizes me, but it did. And she sat on my lap the entire half hour she was in the daycare with me and I didn't mind. She actually fell asleep which kind of defeated the whole purpose of her being there in the first place, but oh well. Literally, she limped over to me (she's still in a cast and she refuses to be carried by any of the nurses), she sat in my lap, sucked on her thumb and fell right asleep. The nurse that brought her down said that that's the first time since she's been in the hospital that she fell asleep on her own without sedation. Dr. Robbins came back down to take her up to the playroom when her time in the daycare was up and she said that it would be okay if I went up to her room later on after my shift is over to put her to sleep for the night so I think I'll do that.

"That's a pretty picture, Zola." With my chin in my hand, I just watch her while she scribbles with a pink crayon all over a sheet of construction paper. She doesn't talk much, but I'd be lying if I said that she hasn't kept me good company. Up until a while ago, Stephanie was the only person I could stand being around today. Make that Stephanie and Zola now. She picks up a cluster of a red crayon, a yellow crayon and a blue crayon and hands them to me. "Thank you. Do you want me to color a picture now too?" She doesn't say anything to me, she just keeps piling crayons on me. "Do you want Jo Jo to color a picture too?" She nods her head at me.

I grab a piece of construction paper and draw a line that'll be the stem of a flower that I attempt to draw. I can't draw for shit, by the way. I'm a lot of things but artistic is not one of those things. While I start drawing the center of my flower, I feel someone tugging on my ponytail. It's not a hard tug, it's more like a very rough pet. I put my crayon down and turn my head. Another little girl with chubby cheeks, tanned skin and straight silky black hair is standing behind me. "Oh…hello." Being in this daycare all day really made me realize that I have more patience than I ever knew. I normally HATE to have my hair pulled and messed with, but when the little kids do it, I don't care. "What's your name?" I ask the hair-pulling bandit. She's cute but like Zola, she doesn't talk to me. She just keeps playing with my hair. I guess I don't really care. So the little girl has more leeway with my hair, I reach back and pull it out of my ponytail.

When she sees the other little girl with her hands in my hair, Zola puts her crayons down and stands behind me as well. The tanned skin girl picks up a crayon and starts coloring my hair. I don't even bother to stop her because crayon won't show up on my hair because A, it's crayon and B, my hair is too dark anyway. "Are you guys giving Jo Jo a makeover?" Neither one of them answer me. Instead, I get a little giggle from Zola and nothing out of the tan one. This is the second time I've been given a makeover today, but this is the first time they actually played with my hair. "Okay… make sure you guys make me pretty." I pick up a purple crayon and start drawing flower petals.

From the corner of my eye, I see the door to the daycare open and through it walks both Dr. Torres and Dr. Grey. _FINALLY! SOMEONE TO SAVE ME! _I put the purple crayon down and look up at the two of them with desperation in my eyes. Okay so, I'm hungry and I really need to pee. I haven't been able to move out of this daycare for the last couple hours. I need to piss, I need to eat and I really just need to see a patient. I don't even feel like an intern anymore as much as I feel like a babysitter. But I must admit that spending time with kids all day really took my mind off Alex. "Wilson…what have they done to you?" Dr. Torres shakes her head like I'm the most pitiful thing she's ever seen.

"They're…giving me a makeover." I poke my lip out and mouth "help me" to the both of them.

"Alright…come on, Zo Zo. No more torturing poor Jo here." Dr. Grey picks Zola up and hoists her on her hip. Dr. Torres picks up the other little girl… she must be her daughter. I guess yeah that makes sense now. They look alike. "Are you hungry Wilson?" I nod my head and pick myself up off the floor. When I stand up, a yellow crayon falls out of my hair. "Alright, it's lunch time… you can go ahead and eat. Thanks, by the way. You really came through for me today."

"No problem." It totally IS a problem though. I've been a professional babysitter all freaking day. Can I at least go spend time in the pit? I'll do whatever scut anybody has…please just let me feel like a friggin' surgeon. I can't tell Dr. Grey that I had a problem babysitting her child though. She's my superior…if she tells me she wants me to mop the floor with my tongue, I would. I'd cry about it, but I would do it. "Um… we colored pictures, I got a makeover, she sang the Frozen song to me, we took a potty break and I got another makeover by both of them…and that's pretty much it."

"So she was good?" I follow the both of them out of the door.

"Yeah…they both were." I grab my hair while I'm walking and tie it back up. "Your little girl sang to me earlier as well." I tell Dr. Torres. "She sang Taylor Swift to me… it was cute."

"If you'd let her, she'd talk your ear off. Sofia talks a whole lot once she's comfortable with her." She's holding the little girl's hand while she walks. Yeah I definitely should've been able to see that sooner. She looks JUST like Dr. Torres. "You got kids, Wilson? You're great with them…"

I shake my head. "No… I don't have kids." And even though I still don't have the desire to have kids someday, I decide to leave that part out.

**X X X **

I have about two hours until my shift is over and I'm still running around like a chicken with my head cut off for Dr. Grey. She has a hernia repair that she's letting me scrub in on in an hour for watching her kid today. Maybe she's not such a Medusa after all, but she could at least give me a break. The only break I've had today was during lunch. After lunch, I had to do all her afternoon rounds and schedule a few more surgeries for her. Now she's got me running down to OB to check on one of her pregnant patients with gall stones. I think I'm gonna pass out when I get home and go to bed.

On the up side, I don't have to worry about paper charts anymore because Dr. Grey trusts me enough with her code now to log into the electronic system. I grab the electronic chart of the charging dock and start walking up the flight of steps that'll lead me to OB. I punch her code into the chart system and bring up the patient I'm supposed to go check on. Her name is Bridget McKellar…. And she's in room 201. Sounds easy enough. I flash my name badge to the nurses at the OB nurses' station and keep walking. The OB nurses are like WAY strict when it comes to people that aren't authorized to be there being on this floor. I guess they're so freakish about it because people steal babies and shit like that all the time and they want to make sure people aren't coming in to do that.

I knock twice and open up the door to Mrs. McKellar's room. The lady is laying in her bed, clearly heavily pregnant, reading a book with a pink cover. "I'm Dr. Wilson, Dr. Grey's intern… I'm just here to check and see how you're doing." I squirt some hand sanitizer on my hand and rub it in. "It says here on your chart that you were experiencing Braxton Hicks… have those gone away or are you still in discomfort?"

"They've gone away, hon. I was wondering if I could get something for the pain in my back if that's possible…" She's clearly older than I am which is why I assume she felt the need to call me "hon."

"Let me just have a look here…" I take a look at her vitals and I check the last time she's been given some fluids for pain management. It's been about eight hours since her last dose so she can have some more. But I don't know if her baby can withstand this much medicine in this amount of time and I'm really not trying to be held accountable for killing this woman's kid so I'll just ask one of the nurses out there about it. "It's been about eight hours since the last time you've gotten pain medicine, so generally that's beyond the time frame and you should be alright to have more pain medicine however I'm not too sure about your baby… I'm just gonna go ask a nurse to be sure."

"Thank you honey."

"You're welcome." I grab the chart and leave the room. I look down the hall to see if there's a nurse that's already on the floor and not at the nurses' station when I see him for the first time in a while. "Fuck." I mumble to myself as soon as I see him. I should've known better. I should've KNOWN that being up here would probably mean that I'd see him. I'd rather come face to face with Alex and I mean that. I lean against the nurses' station and ignore him like I've been doing for the past two weeks. "The patient in room…" I can't even concentrate long enough to remember what I wanted to ask the nurses, because the look he's giving me is something DEADLY.

"Well would you look and see who's still alive…" His voice is all friendly and playful which makes my stomach drop because even though I didn't know him for that long, I knew him long enough to realize what he means when he acts all happy and shit. He's psychotic. "Long time no see, right?"

"…Hi Jason." I focus all my attention on the nurses. "So I have a patient in room 201… she wants pain medicine but I'm not—" He grabs my arm and my entire body just…tenses up.

"Come on… I want to talk to you about something." He mutters and literally DRAGS me away from the nurses' station…and the nurses don't even do anything about it. Granted there's only two nurses there but still… they have to know how psychotic he is by now, don't they? He pulls me over to an empty, barren hallway and stands in front of me so I can't leave without passing him. "Why haven't you been returning my calls? Or my texts? It's been two weeks!"

"…I thought you'd get the picture." I look behind him to see if there's an alternative route I could go if I have to run from him. Down the long hallway is some other guy wearing blue scrubs and that's it. No alternative to being here with him. "Look…we can talk about this some other time. I have a patient that I have to take care of. I'll talk to you later."

"Just tell me why you didn't have the balls to break up with me for real?"

"…I don't have to explain." I sidestep him. "Excuse me." He pushes me back by my shoulders. "Stop… I'm not even fucking kidding."

"I thought we were good…and you just leave me hanging like that?" I'm not even looking him in his face. I'm focusing on the dude at the end of the hallway wearing the blue scrubs who seems to be watching us. "You can't just leave me on a limb like that. I started to come over to your house…"

"What do you mean you thought we were good? You hit me…" I squint my eyes. "We're over. Since you need me to spell it out for you… we're over. And we've BEEN over. Leave me alone now." I sidestep him again but he grabs my arm. "Jason, I'm so serious… I'm not even joking. Lemme go." He squeezes my arm and slams me so hard against the wall that the electronic chart in my hand drops down to the ground and slides across the floor. _My shoulder… oh my god, I think he just dislocated my shoulder… _"STOP!" _I really want to hit him back but the last time I hit a man back hard enough to let him know I meant business, I got arrested… _He pins me against the wall and hovers over me. Through my peripheral vision, the dude in the blue scrubs that was watching us gets closer and closer. _…Of course. Of fucking course. Oh, OF COURSE. This is just my luck, isn't it? Because NOTHING in my life can play out right. Nope. No random stranger could help me…right? It has to be HIM of all people. _

"Dude… just leave her alone." Like the nonexistent God in the sky is just trying to taunt me, ALEX of all people wraps his hands around Jason's shoulders. "Leave her alone."

When I think about it, it makes sense that he'd be up on OB's floor as well. He's a Pediatric surgical resident…Peds and OB go hand in hand…it doesn't surprise me that he's on this floor as well. But COME ON. It's like a double freaking whammy for me here. Psycho ex is trying to kill me but oh look! Captain Save-A-Hoe to the rescue! "Alex, just don't… don't, okay?" I'm holding my shoulder in pain, but I really need him to just go… I can handle this.

Jason pushes Alex's hands off his body. "You've had a problem with her and me from day one. You LEAVE. I'm having a conversation with my girlfriend…"

"Alex… GO." I use my good arm to push him away.

With his hands TIGHT around Jason's shoulders, Alex just gives me a glance that lets me know that I need to shut up. "You don't put your hands on her."

"Oh it's not me you have the problem with… you have a problem with the fact that I fucked her." Jason pushes him away again but Alex draws his fist back.

"ALEX, STOP!" I grab his fist before he can even connect it with any part of Jason. "Just walk away! Walk away… Okay? Walk away…"

"Get off me, Jo." He talks to me through clenched teeth.

"No… just walk away. Don't… don't go to his level. Please… walk away." I keep my hand on his fist. "Walk away…."

He takes a hard, sharp breath and does what I say. He kicks a garbage can over in his haste and walks back down the hallway the way he came. I'm so grateful that he helped me out. I mean, there's no telling what Jason could've done to me. But HIM of all people…HIM. HE had to be the one to step in though? I look at Jason, shake my head and walk after Alex.

He needs to be calmed down.


	18. Chapter 18

"Alex!" While I'm making my way back up the hallway I came down, she's screaming after me. I can't even bring myself to look at her because what just happened WASN'T supposed to have happened. I don't even know what came over me. I wasn't looking for her or anything, I was just looking for extra blankets because I have a patient up here on OB that just delivered three weeks early and the baby needs an extra blanket. While I was looking, I just so happened to stumble across Asshole yelling at somebody that just so happened to be my girl. Something came over me when I saw him slam her against the wall though. What I felt when I saw that was something stronger than anger. I could've killed that asshole and I don't think Jo understands that. "Alex, wait… please…" The only reason I stop walking is because it sounds like she's crying. _Please don't let her be hurt. Please…DON'T let this girl be hurt. If he hurt her… Let's just say that it won't be good for him if she's hurt. _

I stop walking and turn around. The garbage can I kicked over is sprawled out in the middle of the floor. She's has her right arm slung across her body holding her left one like that's the arm that's hurting her and she's walking slowly towards me. She looks behind her while she walks like she's afraid that he might be chasing after her but he's not. He took a hint and disappeared down the other end of the hall. She's crying quite loudly and I know she's hurt but I can't help but notice that her cry is really pretty. When she makes it over to me, she stands at a decent distance from me and keeps crying. She coughs softly and lets the tears run down her face. I can't even open my mouth to ask her if she's alright. I'm too pissed off to even utter a complete sentence. It's really taking every bit of strength in my body not to go break my foot off in Peckwell's ass.

Instead of me breaking the deafening silence between us, she does. "Are you okay?" She asks me. Her usually perfectly tanned-white skin is blotchy and red from her crying. I can't believe she's asking me if I'M okay. She just got manhandled and slammed into a wall…yet she's asking me if I'm alright. "I'm sorry you had to see that I just… I thought I had it under control." She looks elsewhere instead of looking me in my eye. "I'm sorry."

"What the hell are you sorry for?!" I find myself screaming at her so I tone it down a bit. She just made me so mad with that. Why the hell is she apologizing when HE just put his hands on her? He doesn't get to touch her anymore. And to make matters worse, I had to find out from HIM that she had sex with that clown? Again, angry isn't the word… I'm not angry. I'm BEYOND pissed off. I'm pissed that I just saw him put his hands on her and I can't kill him like I want to because I'm at work and I'm even worse off because I just found out that she…like an IDIOT…she slept with him. She told me that she had sex with him before when I didn't really give a damn about her but… the way he said it this time. He said it like she meant nothing to him. "You don't have to apologize for him being a bastard."

Her jaw trembles like she's gonna start crying some more and she nods. She blinks once and more tears flood her face. Slowly and reluctantly, she takes her hand away from her injured arm and puts her head down. I don't think I've ever seen Jo so upset. Not even when I told her we couldn't be friends anymore. "Lemme see…" I mumble and gently take her hurt arm into my hand. "He hurt your shoulder?" She nods her head and sniffs. "I don't think it's dislocated… but come on."

"I have to do something for Dr. Grey…" She pushes my hand away from her and sighs. "You can go back to not being my friend anymore. You don't have to…feel sorry for me. Thank you for…helping me out, but I get the picture. You don't have to be my friend, Alex." She goes back to holding her hurt arm with her free one. "Thanks again." She tries to walk away but I don't let her.

"Jo, wait." I grab her hand. "I only said that I can't be your friend anymore. I didn't say that I don't want to be." I interlock our fingers so she can't take her hand out of my grasp without a fight. "Come here." I shake my head because I know I'm about to regress by talking to her and being with her but I can't help it. I can't just let her walk away. I can't let her walk away when she's hurt, I can't fight the fact that I want to kill Peckwell and I can't ignore the fact that I'm PISSED that he made having sex with her sound like a hobby instead of something special. "I still want to be your friend but…" I close my eyes. "What happened two nights ago can't keep happening…"

"I know, okay? I know…" She bites her lip. "…You made that clear when you kissed her like that in front of me. I know you don't want me Alex. I know you don't care about me and I know you don't want me and I know that kissing me wasn't something that you wanted to do. You did it to appease me." She finally looks me in my eyes and all I can see is tears. I'm not a complete ass, you know? I'm not completely insensitive and I don't want to make Jo cry. I stare at her mouth and think about how it tasted a couple nights ago. "You didn't have to do that… you didn't have to do that to me. I get it. I get that she means everything to you and I mean nothing. You didn't have to embarrass me…"

"Sorry, alright?" I brush my fingers along her cheek to wipe away her tears and curl my hands through her beautifully thick, wavy brown hair. She looks down instead of at me. "Look at me, Jo…" She doesn't move her head up, she just moves her eyes to look at me. "I… I care about you. I care about you so much that it frustrates me. You're right; I don't want to be your friend." She rolls her eyes at that but I keep talking to clean it up. "I don't want to be your friend Jo… but it hurts to NOT be your friend. I care about you…don't you ever think that I don't. I'm sorry that I embarrassed you by doing that but… you just don't understand."

"Then make me understand, Alex… make me understand. Because I want to understand. I want to understand why one minute you hate me then the next you don't. I want to understand why you were going to punch Jason over me. I wanna understand why you felt the need to embarrass me like that in front of your fiancée. That wasn't necessary, Alex. You say I don't understand but you make no effort to make me."

"I can't make you understand. There's no way to get you to understand when I don't even understand. I can't tell you one thing when I don't even understand it. I'm in a rough place here."

"You kissed her in front of me, Alex… what's so hard about explaining that?"

"It just a kiss… and she's my fiancée, why the hell wouldn't I kiss her?"

"I'm just saying…"

I think I'm about to open up a can of worms here but she's bringing me to the point. I was just gonna let it go and bask in anger and irritation by my lonesome without even mentioning the fact that I'm pissed to her but she's gonna take me to this point so I'm just gonna say it. "What about the fact that you had sex with Peckwell?" Her jaw drops when I say it as I knew it probably would. "You had sex with him. You barely even knew the jerk but you slept with him…and now he runs around and talks about it like it's something casual."

"He was my BOYFRIEND and that's not your business." She's mad at me, I can tell. She's pissed at me for even bringing it up. "I had sex with my BOYFRIEND and it was before I even gave a shit about you. I had sex with him before all of this."

"Right. And Izzie is my fiancée, I kissed her in front of you… how is any of that YOUR business?" I put my hands on my hips and raise my eyebrow, hoping that she gets where I'm going with this. "What you did with Peckwell isn't my business. I think you're an idiot that needs to keep her pants on. I don't think you had ANY business sleeping with that man…but you did and that's NOT my business. Just like what I did with Izzie isn't your business."

"You were making out with me two nights ago… HOW is the fact that you kissed her in front of me not my business? I didn't have sex with Jason in front of you, first of all…and second of all, I didn't have sex with him after I had sex with you. There's a difference." She folds her arms and glares at me. "…Why do you care about what I do with Jason anyway? What I do and who I have sex with shouldn't matter to you."

"I just think you should keep your pants on…and have sex with people that'll appreciate you."

"Yeah I'll remember that next time, Ace." She rolls her eyes. "So what is this? Are we friends or not? Make up your mind because your moods are giving me whiplash and you're starting to piss me off."

I sigh. I hope I won't regret this. I really hope I won't regret being her friend again. I know I shouldn't be her friend. I know that being her friend isn't gonna do anything but cause problems but just like I told her…NOT being her friend is way worse. I have to practice some restraint around her. And maybe if we both set some limitations and boundaries, being friends won't be such a terrible thing. "…You said you're free tomorrow?" She nods her head slowly, skeptically. "Wanna meet at Joe's tomorrow around 9:30?"

"Sure." She looks down at her pager. "I have to go…Dr. Grey's paging me." I notice a pained look on her face as she rolls her shoulder around. I'm glad she can move it though. She can move it so nothing's broken or dislocated. If he would've broken something in this girl's arm then I would've been forced to fuck him up. There literally wouldn't have been any other option for me. If he would've broken Jo's shoulder or her collarbone or ANYTHING on her for that matter, I wouldn't be able to help myself and I'd probably kill that man. "9:30 tomorrow?"

"9:30."

"I'll be there."

**X X X **

"What do you work tomorrow?" I shut the shower water off and reach my hand out to grab my towel before I pull the shower curtain back. I wrap my towel around my waist and pull the curtain back. She's standing at the sink brushing her teeth and washing her face for bed. She's in a t-shirt and her underwear which doesn't even excite me anymore. I used to get real happy and stuff when Iz walked around in her underwear because I used to think of it as one less article of clothing I had to remove when we were gonna have sex. But she kind of lost her sex drive and ever since she decided that she doesn't like sex as much as she used to, it hasn't excited me to see her in her underwear anymore.

She leans forward to spit out her mouthful of toothpaste. "I go in at 7:30 tomorrow morning and I'm not sure what time I'll get off. It's lump and bump day tomorrow so I probably won't be home until late. Why?" She sticks her toothbrush back into the holder and wipes her mouth with the back of her hand. "Don't you get off at 8:00 tomorrow?"

"Yeah." I grab my own toothbrush and squirt some toothpaste onto it. "And I was just wondering if you care if I go out and have a drink with Jo tomorrow. If it bothers you that I go out with her then I just won't go…I just thought I'd ask before I just go." I just lied to her. If she told me that it would bother her if I went out with Jo tomorrow night, I'd still go anyway. I'd probably lie and say that I'm going out with Avery instead but I'd still go hang out with Jo. I'd feel a lot better if Iz knew and didn't care that I hung out with her though. If I'm being honest, I think the days of Iz not caring if I hang out with Jo are over. Now that I told her Jo had a crush on me, I 'm pretty sure I can kiss those days goodbye.

"I don't care." She shrugs her shoulders and stands behind me while I stand at the sink. She puts her hands around my waist and rests her head in the middle of my damp back. "Are you sure you don't encourage her?" She slides her hands from my waist up to my chest. "You said that she had a crush on you…are you sure you don't encourage it? By inviting her over and stuff? I'm not in the business of sharing my husband, you know…"

"I'm sure, Iz." I start brushing my teeth in hopes that she'll just drop the subject.

"If you have a crush on her too Alex, that's all you have to say." She sounds like she'd be cool with it if I did tell her that I'm falling for Jo just a little bit but I know it'd be the exact opposite. She'd rip me a new asshole if I told her how I feel about Jo and that's the truth. I'm not falling into the trap of her sounding like she'd be cool with it. Nope. "She's pretty and she's young. She's small…smaller than me at least. She's cute…"

"Enough about Jo for one day please." I usually hold my tongue around Iz because I know the SECOND we start to fight, she'll be on that phone with her mom arranging a trip to Chehalis. But this time is different. It's almost as if I don't give a shit that she'll leave me if we argue and I really don't think I care. "I don't know how we're gonna get married if you can never trust me. You always assume the worst with me and it gets really freaking old. I love you Iz… but you make it so hard sometimes."

"Oh my god whatever. I was being nice about it but since you want to be a dick, fine. I won't ask you and I won't try to be understanding." She takes her hands off me and stomps out of the bathroom.

"You don't have to be understanding because I don't like Jo. There's nothing for you to be understanding about. It gets so old to listen to the same thing every day. I hear it from Mere, I hear it from Robbins, I hear it from Cristina and now I have to hear it from you too… I'm tired of hearing it." I go into our bedroom and grab a pair of boxers to put on. "I'm just sick of hearing it. I want everybody to shut up about it…not just you."

That's the truth though. I want everyone to shut up about it. Okay yeah, I like Jo. Yeah I like her and yeah I liked kissing her and yeah I care about her. But I don't want to keep constantly hearing it because all it does is make me feel worse and worse and worse about it. It's like when you make a huge mistake and you KNOW you made a huge mistake and you just want to forget about it but everyone keeps on bringing it up. I wish everyone would just leave me the hell alone about Jo. I'm digging my own grave with that girl and I'm making my own decisions and I don't need people in my ear to keep reminding me about her. She's on my mind enough as it is.

I already know that people are gonna hate me enough as it is without me thinking about her 24/7. I haven't decided what I'm gonna do about it yet but I already know that people won't be understanding. If I decide to leave Izzie and try out the relationship with Jo, everyone's gonna think I'm a dick. They won't understand that I feel like I'm drowning with Izzie anymore. They won't even listen if I try to explain that I didn't mean to fall for Jo. And if I stay with Izzie and decide to just cut Jo out of my life for good, Jo damn for sure won't want to hear that I kissed her and I care about her but I don't want her. Nobody is gonna understand what a tough position I'm in so I literally don't want to hear anything from anybody.

No matter how the chips fall, it's always gonna end up coming back to me being an asshole because once you cheat on your fiancée and once you break a girl's heart, you're an asshole for good.

**Jo's Point of View.**

This bruise on my shoulder is the size of an orange. I'm glad to know that my arm isn't broken or dislocated or anything like that but it hurts like hell. I can't keep letting him put his hands on me like this. He's really starting to bruise up my body and I don't like that. Granted, I think he gets the picture about us being broken up now and hopefully I won't ever have to deal with his psychotic ass again but I swear if he does hit me again, it's not going to end well for him. I'm not a fucking punching bag and I don't appreciate being treated like one. I'm just so scared to hit him back because seriously, the last time I hit someone that was hitting me, I ended up in jail. It was a real stupid reason and the jackass had no right to call the police on me but he did and I was in jail for a good four days. That was a dark time in my life and I don't really like to think about it or talk about it but yeah… I could really hurt him if I hit him back and that scares me.

I lifelessly squeeze some Bengay into the palm of my hand and rub it on my bruise. Steph looked at it for me while we were still at work just to make sure there wasn't anything broken. She said it looked like I bruised my shoulder pretty bad but she couldn't be sure unless she asked Dr. Torres and I refused. The last thing I need is to explain to one of my superiors that my ex-boyfriend beat the hell out of me. I can move it and it doesn't hurt as bad as it did when it happened so I'll take that as a sign that it's going to be fine. "Mmm mmm…" I softly bob my head and hum aloud to the song I'm singing in my head. It's been stuck in my head since I was in the daycare with Zola and Sofia earlier. It's some Taylor Swift song that I've heard on the radio but I don't know the name of. Something about being young and reckless and being insane, that's all I've caught from the bits and pieces of the song I've heard. Sofia was singing it to me today but her little jibber-jabber didn't do the song much justice.

I walk into the living room and sit down on the couch next to Steph. I'm getting used to being here, by the way. I've been living with her for almost a month (it'll be a month in a week and three days) now and things are getting easier. I mean I'm getting good with not having to lock the door at all times and I've been making conscious efforts to keep my hair out of the shower. Also, it's not a big deal for me to walk around in my underwear anymore. I'm wearing a long t-shirt and a pair of underwear and Steph's donning the same exact thing. "So what's the move for tomorrow?" I ask her. We're off tomorrow and tomorrow's payday. Next week we start working every day and we're only off on weekends but for now, we're just supposed to enjoy our next off day and our first payday.

"I don't even know." She pushes pause on the remote control and turns to me. "I was looking through my clothes yesterday and I realized that I need more jeans and stuff so I was gonna go shopping tomorrow since we literally have no bills to pay this month and this paycheck will probably be the only check we can splurge with. So I was gonna run to the mall… what about you?"

"I was just gonna throw it in the bank." I grab a couch pillow and put it across my lap. "I don't need clothes or anything. I'm probably just gonna save it for a rainy day or something."

"Jo… we literally have like a thousand dollar paycheck coming our way tomorrow…and you don't want to splurge on ANYTHING?"

"No." I poke my lip out and shake my head. "I don't need anything."

"I can think of about a million things that you could buy yourself. You can buy yourself a new phone because the one you have is a shitty minute phone. You could come out to the mall with me and buy yourself some new clothes. You could get your nails done with me. You could get your hair cut because you've been screaming about that for a while. You could grab yourself some new shoes…. There are so many things that you could splurge on."

"But I don't need any of that. I'd rather just save it. I can't afford to buy myself a phone that I can't keep up with, I don't care if I have new clothes because all I do is wear scrubs anyway, my nails don't need done, I can cut my own hair and I have sneakers."

"It's okay to treat yourself you know…" She unpauses the TV and grabs an Oreo out of the pack sitting on the coffee table. "You worked hard for that money and you deserve to treat yourself. You don't ever do anything for yourself, Jos." _Did she just call me "Jos"? Someone used to call me that when I was in high school… I kind of miss that someone. _"You do everything for everyone else and you never do anything nice for yourself. You know damn well you need some new clothes and you know damn well you need your hair done and a new pair of shoes. But you're too damn stubborn and too much of a miser to do something for yourself."

"…But what if I spend the money on stuff I need and I need it for something else… like what if I can't pay my portion of the rent or something or what if we have a fight and you kick me out or something. You don't understand how quickly things change, Steph. If you understood, you'd save it too."

"How many times do I have to tell you that nothing is going to happen?!" She looks at me like she's a little bit irritated. "NOTHING is gonna happen, Jo. You'll never go hungry while you're with me, you'll never be thrown out on your ass as long as you're living with me…NOTHING will happen. You need new clothes so buy yourself new clothes. Simple as that. I promise I won't kick you out. I promise we won't be hungry. I promise okay?"

"…Okay." I tuck my hair behind my ear. "…So if we really do have a thousand bucks coming to us, I could probably swing a new phone and new clothes but that's it. I don't want anything real expensive. I don't need one of those smart phones or anything like that. And I'll settle for going to like… the cheapest clothes store around. I don't need anything real expensive to make me happy."

"Of course you don't." She lies back on the couch and puts her head on my lap. "So you said something about having a date tomorrow? Should I come with? Just to make sure he doesn't start hitting you?"

"It's not with Jason, it's with Alex."

"Jo."

"What?"

"No…that's what."

"I can take care of myself, Steph. I know what I'm doing. I know how to protect myself from getting hurt by him."

"Where have I heard that before?"

"I know… but it's just for a drink. I'm not kissing him again and I'm not going to his house. I'll be fine. I'm just glad that we can be friends…"

"…Alright." She sighs. "You know I'll be here to wipe your tears and stuff."

"That's why I love you."


	19. Chapter 19

I can't believe I let Steph talk me into spending all my damn money. Don't get me wrong; I'm not mad at her. I'm not mad at her at all. I'm actually quite thankful for her if I'm being honest. She made me realize that I actually do need to start taking better care of myself. The only issue I'm having now is that, well… I'm fucking broke. I spent almost every last dime of my paycheck. I have forty bucks to my name for the next two weeks until I get paid again. I put all my shopping bags down on the floor of my bedroom and start going through them so I can put my new things away. Is it weird that I feel like crying? I've never had shopping bags upon shopping bags upon shopping bags full of things that are all mine. Everything in these bags belongs to me and I feel like I could just cry.

I start with one of the bigger light pink and hot pink striped Victoria's Secret bags and open it up. This must be what it feels like to actually be a girl because I swear once I started shopping, I couldn't stop. Steph and I hit every interesting store in the mall and we were seriously running out of arm space for bags. I reach my hand down inside the bag and pull out the first pair of sweatpants that I bought. They're black and they say PINK down the leg in cheetah print letters. I bought a couple PINK jackets and three pairs of yoga pants from Victoria's Secret. I rounded out that store with seven pairs of sexy underwear, a really nice padded bra and three thongs because Steph insisted that I had to wear thongs if I was gonna wear yoga pants.

We went to some other store called Forever 21 and I bought a couple shirts and a few pairs of jeans from there. I got a couple new pairs of boots from this store called The Shoe Warehouse and I got pair of sneakers from there as well. Steph went into the AT&T store to see if she could buy a new case for her phone, or so she claims that was the reason we went there. I don't know how the hell it happened but while I was looking around at the fancy smart phones I could never afford, Steph was talking to this guy that worked at the store and half an hour later, I walked out of that store with a brand new iPhone. It's pink on the back but I have a case on it because the case was free with my contract. Something about signing a contract didn't set right with me but Steph promised me that it was alright and so I trusted her.

I owe her sixty bucks a month for the phone bill in addition to paying my portion of the rent each month. The $60 shouldn't be too bad for me to afford if I'm careful. If I'm careful not to go over our data package, sixty bucks should average out to the amount of money I used to spend purchasing minutes for my TracFone. My phone isn't nearly as impressive as Steph's gigantic Galaxy android phone but you know what? It's fine for me. I've never had a phone like this before and plus it didn't even cost me that much. It cost me $26 because I had to pay something out of pocket for the actual phone but it was discounted because I was starting a new contract with Steph's pre-existing one.

After we ate lunch at the food court, we went into this store called Journey's because Steph wanted to buy a pair of Converse to wear at work and I caved in and bought a pair for myself. It worked out pretty well because I wear a size seven and Steph wears a seven and a half so we can share shoes sometimes. She bought a black pair and I thought I was cute because I found a pair of baby blue ones that'll match our scrubs. We rounded out our shopping expedition by stopping at Bath & Body Works. I bought a couple bottles of perfume and a bottle of lotion and a couple portable hand sanitizers to carry around in my scrub pants. All in all, today was a successful day. I'm running low on cash until next payday but I feel really good. I have nice things for once in my life.

It's almost 8:30 and I need to start getting ready to meet Alex and Joe's in an hour. I'm honestly hoping that tonight doesn't end horribly with him because I've been having a pretty awesome day thus far. I'm literally so happy for the first time in a while and it'd be a real bitch if he ruined it for some reason. I don't think he will because clearly we established that we're friends and if I go into this date with a friendly mindset, I won't be upset; but I'm not completely ruling out the possibility that he might piss me off somehow. Put it this way: This date can either be the perfect end to a perfect day or a shitty end to a perfect day. I hope it's the latter.

When I finish putting all my new things into their respective places, I plug my new phone into the charger and lie it down gingerly on my bed. Aside from my watch, my phone is the nicest thing I've ever owned in my life. I'm going to go take a shower because I don't want to smell bad around Alex first of all and second of all, I'll probably be home late and I won't feel like showering later. Steph didn't come home with me. She dropped me off then went out somewhere with Leah so since she's not home, I can take however long I need to take in the shower; which is good because I desperately need to shave. I'm not planning on doing anything tonight with Alex or ANYONE for that matter; I just haven't shaved in a while. My armpits need shaved, my legs DESPERATELY need shaved and between my legs is way too fuzzy for my liking as well.

I turn on the shower water and make sure it's as hot as I like it to be. I take off my clothes and step right inside the spray. I'm kind of excited to spend time with Alex. Despite the fact that he makes me physically sick every time I see him and my stomach ties up in knots when he speaks to me, I really like being with him. I like spending time with him and I like feeling like I don't have to share him for an hour or two. I think I might love him. I really think I might love him and that scares the crap out of me. It scares me because it might not be pure and I might just be pining after him just because he shows me some attention because I tend to do that. I just can't go a day without thinking about him…when I do think about him, I'm instantly happy… I smile every time he crosses my mind even when I want to cry, I find myself looking for ways just to see him… if that isn't love then what the hell is it? I fall for boys entirely too quickly. I swear I'm delusional.

But if it's not love then what the hell is it?

**X X X **

"Just leave the door unlocked for me. I don't know what time I'll be home." I'm a little bit early so I'm sitting in a booth towards the back of the bar by myself while I wait for him. I'm only early by about ten minutes so it's not that much of a wait. "I'll be okay… okay. Thanks for asking…. Yeah, I'm sure." Steph's busy being a mother to me instead of being my friend but I don't really mind it. It's kind of sweet how she always makes sure I'm okay. I drum my fingers along the pleated wood of the tabletop. "Mhm… Yeah. Alright. Love ya too… yeah, see you. Bye." I tap the end button on my phone and slide it to the corner of the table so it's out of my way.

I didn't dress super pretty but I just hope I'm not underdressed or overdressed. I put on a pair of my new black yoga pants—the ones with the word PINK written across the lower backside in blue glittery letters and I put on one of the oversized knit sweaters I bought. It's blue to match the lettering on my pants and it has little flecks of glitter in it. I bought it in a large so it'd hang off my shoulders and it is. I put on my new bra and one of my new thongs as well. The thong is a little bit uncomfortable but I'm pushing through. I didn't want to overdo it so I didn't doll myself up with makeup but I do have a little bit of earth-toned eye shadow on and some mascara. I nixed the eyeliner.

There are so many couples here tonight that I feel like the world is personally against me. There's a couple sitting in the booth behind me, there's a couple in the booth in front of me and a couple in the booth across from me. I mean it's Friday so I get why everyone is with their significant others tonight but still… must they all sit around me? Anyway, this bar brings back bad Jason memories. I hope I can wash out all those bad memories tonight with good ones from Alex. I feel the air shift beside me and I pick my head up.

He's wearing a pair of jeans and a long sleeve sweater. He looks like he might've just gotten out of the shower because his hair is wet but that could also be an indication that it's raining outside which wouldn't be a surprise for Seattle weather. "And I thought I was early…" He adjusts himself so that he's comfortable in the seat and folds his hands. He sighs like he just managed to catch his breath and licks his lips. "So what's up?"

I can't help myself…I just have to smile. "Nothing… just waiting for you, obviously." I rest my chin in my hand and continue smiling at him. I really wish I could stop smiling like an idiot but I can't help it. "Is it raining outside or did you just get out of the shower?"

"Little bit of both." He runs his hand through his hair like he's checking to see if it's still wet and wipes the dampness on his pant leg. "So what'd you do on your day off?"

"Went to the mall and spent my entire paycheck….that's about it." I clear my throat. "How was work?"

"Slow." He slips the cocktail waitress walking past us a ten dollar bill and grabs two beers off the tray she's carrying. He slides one bottle across the table at me. "I spent the whole day in the NICU because we were slow." I pick up my own beer and start to take the cap off of it. He twists the cap off his with ease and takes a sip of it. "Had a talk with your little boyfriend too."

"…You didn't!" I immediately put the bottle down and just stare at him. "Alex… no! What'd you say?! Come on… you didn't have to do that…"

"I did." He nods. "He doesn't get to put his hands on you. That doesn't fly."

"Just drop it…god." I roll my eyes. "I don't even want to know what you said to him… I don't even care. It was so unnecessary for you to do that. I said I have it under control and I do… I don't need you to fight my battles. Damn." It's starting out to seem like this is going to be a shitty end to a perfect day. He hasn't even been here five minutes and I'm already irritated with him. "Stay the hell out of my business… that wasn't your business!"

"When he's slamming you into walls, bruising your arm up all bad like that it IS my business. He doesn't get to hurt you Jo… that's not cool. He doesn't get to hit you or talk about you like you're a piece of meat. You don't deserve that and it's bullshit that you're fine with letting him do that to you. That's shit Jo and you know it is."

"I have it under control though, that what you're not getting! I don't need you to fight my battles. I don't need you to protect me. You're not my guardian angel and you're NOT my boyfriend. I have nothing to do with you aside from being your friend. That wasn't your place to talk to him without me knowing. I swear…" I look up at the ceiling and grind my teeth together. "I can handle Jason."

"Oh well." He shrugs. "It's over, it's done with. I talked to him about putting his hands on you and I told him I'd kill him if I ever found out he did it again. I don't care. I care about you and I care if someone's hurting you and I'm not gonna apologize for that."

"Whatever." I just shake my head and take the first sip of my beer. I don't want to end the night by being pissed off with him so hopefully I can change the subject to something better. "I kind of wish you would make up your mind. One day you hate me and then the next you're talking about beating people up over me. Which one is it? Do you hate me or are we friends?" I hope I didn't come off as brash or rude in saying that but I just can't take his mood swings anymore. it's getting to be too much for me to handle emotionally anymore.

"I never did hate you, Jo. I just—"A waitress stops at the table behind us which makes him stop in the middle of his sentence. I turn my bottle of beer up to my mouth again and take a small mouthful. "Are you hungry? Do you want to order something to eat?" He asks me. I have a mouthful of beer so I just nod instead of attempting to talk with my mouth full. I was expecting him to pick up on the sentence he left off on before he asked me if I was hungry but he doesn't. He runs his hand through his hair again and locks his eyes on mine. "I've decided that I'm not gonna try to stay away from you anymore, so there's that."

"Don't worry. I promise it won't happen again." I grab all of my hair that's resting in the middle of my back and move it over to the left side of my shoulder because it's tickling me. I was supposed to get a haircut with my paycheck today but I ended up spending all of it before I got the chance. I really need to get one soon because my hair is disgustingly long. There's no way it should come way past my boobs and touch my stomach when I'm sitting down. When I look up though, I notice that he's looking at me with a strange look on his face. "That was a lapse in my judgment and I'm ready to be your friend…just your friend."

He nods to acknowledge the fact that he heard what I just said to him and downs another gulp of his beer. It's so quiet between us that I can hear the music that's playing over the speakers on the dance floor and purely out of coincidence, Black Widow just so happens to be playing. When I hear it, a smile creeps across my lips. "Isn't this your favorite song?" I lean across the table to ensure that I'm playfully annoying him with my banter. "You used to be…thirsty for me…but now you wanna be set freeeeee."

"Shut up." He taps me on my forearm and sticks his tongue out at me like a five year old. "I lied to you. It's not really my favorite song. I don't listen to much mainstream music and that was the first song that I could think of that I thought you'd know. I didn't know if you'd ever heard of the Styx or Bon Jovi and crap like that."

"…I'm not an alien, of course I've heard of Bon Jovi." He must really think I come from another planet. Who in America hasn't heard of Bon Jovi? "I lived in my car, not under a rock."

"Did you really live in your car or are you just messing with me?"

"Why would I lie about that? I lived in my car all through high school. I don't tell everybody about that…but I wouldn't lie to you about that."

"How, though? I would've never guessed… You seem like you have your shit together and you've always had your shit together…I would've never even guessed." He folds his hands and sits back. "How does one come to live in a car?"

I tuck my hair behind my ear and look down at the table because I'm not sure if I'll be able to look him in his eye while I tell him. "I just got tired of the foster system, basically. I got tired of it. I got tired of bouncing from house to house, going to people that clearly didn't want me and to people that…" My voice cracks and I didn't even realize until now that I'm getting choked up. "People are horrible, Alex. And I got tired of it." I quickly pull myself together enough to finish. "So I was sixteen when my last foster home completely ruined everything for me and I ran away. I didn't run far… but I got the hell out of there and never looked back."

"And they just let you? They didn't even call the cops to find out where you went?"

I shake my head. "They didn't care. And it was a lot of lying all the time. I don't recommend that to anybody but especially not a high schooler. It's A LOT of lying. I'm just glad it's over." I look down at my hand and find a hangnail on my thumb. "So what'd you go to juvi for? Or were you lying about that?"

"Nah, I wasn't lying." He shakes his head. "Dad was a junkie that ran when he got the first chance, mom was schizo so she couldn't take care of us. I have a little brother and a little sister that needed to be fed and I wasn't old enough to get a job yet so I swiped some food from the grocery store…that old thing." I like how he doesn't make a big deal of it. I really think he understands me more than anybody because he seems to understand that every shitty situation doesn't require pity. He gets that some things aren't a big deal because that's life. I like how he just gets it. "You're actually lucky your parents walked before you got the chance to remember how shitty they could be."

"I guess that's one way to think of it." I tap my fingernails on the table. "I like to think that I'm a better person because of it. It sucks to know that nobody in my life has ever wanted me but I can't imagine actually growing up with parents that never wanted you in the first place. I guess growing up on my own taught me how to be independent. I'm a better person because of it." I sigh. "But it's just troubling to think that the one person in this world that's supposed to love you more than she loves herself….doesn't. It still kinda bothers me to think about a mother that could leave her baby."

"That's why I wanna have kids." He mutters and looks away because I think he's getting a bit emotional as well. "I wanna do everything right with my kids, you know? Everything my pop didn't do for me, I wanna do for my kid. I want a do-over… I wanna do it right. I'll be a great dad, I already know it." He clears his throat and grunts. "You ever feel like that? Like you want to do it right with your kids?"

"I don't want kids." I swear I've told him this before but maybe he didn't take me seriously. He looks at me with wide eyes and one eyebrow raised up like he doesn't understand what I just said…so I'll take a courtesy minute to explain that I'm not a heartless bitch that doesn't want children. "I just never had anyone around to teach me how to be a mom so I'd be a horrible one. I didn't have a mom to do my hair for the prom or hold me when I was sick or something. I don't even… I don't even know what mothers do. I just don't feel like I'm cut out to be somebody's mommy…being somebody's mother would be the worst possible thing for me."

"So you never want kids? Like…not even in the future?"

"No. And I'm adamant about that. I haven't wanted kids since I was like eighteen or nineteen and I haven't changed my mind yet so I probably never will. I love little kids and I love babies and I don't have any issues with babysitting or holding a baby but I don't want my own. I don't need to be a mom. Trust me, I don't need to be a mom. Birth control is my best friend. Been on it since I was seventeen and don't plan on being off it until I'm old enough for them to tie my tubes without a hassle."

"At least you realize that. At least you have the brains to realize that you don't want a kid so you're not gonna have one. You're smart about that."

"If by some miracle I got pregnant, I wouldn't abort my baby. I wouldn't abort it and I wouldn't give it up for adoption. I'd get accustomed to the fact that I'm gonna have to suck it up and be a mom and I'd love it and I'd keep it and I'd raise it… but I really don't want one." I don't really want to talk about babies anymore, so I lick my lips and switch tactics. "So do you know where you and Izzie are gonna go on your honeymoon?"

"…We haven't even thought about that yet." His mood instantly changes when we talk about that. I can tell that something's bothering him and just like me, he takes the opportunity to change the subject from his wedding to something else. Remind me to never bring that up to him again. "This is boring." He says, looking around to see everyone that's in the bar at this point.

"Yeah." I agree. It gets all silent again between us again and I hear the music playing again. It's a slower song this time but still a song I know and I catch myself mouthing the lyrics to myself. Isn't that how it usually how it goes? The song that's playing somehow relates to your love life? How cliché, right? "I'm falling apart…I'm barely breathing with a broken heart that's still beating. In the pain there is healing…in your name, I find meaning…so I'm holding on…I'm barely holding onto you…"

"You like Lifehouse?" He must've caught me singing to myself.

"…Yeah a couple songs." I admit.

"Saw them in concert once. They came to Seattle my intern year and me and Izzie went to see them."

"Sweet." I put my tongue in my cheek because that song literally just got me. Don't you hate that? When you're in a perfectly good mood and then you hear a song that just fucks it up? I was doing so well too. I wasn't even thinking about wanting to be with him, I wasn't thinking about how I kissed him…I was being friendly. But that's all down the tubes.

"You wanna go back to my place? To watch a movie? It's boring here." He asks, sounding rather frustrated. I bite my lip and just look at him. I'm sorry but this sounds like something a boyfriend would ask his girlfriend. "As a friend, Jo… As a friend."

"…Okay."


	20. Chapter 20

"Scary movies don't really bother me." Even though we've been in his house for about twenty minutes already, I'm just now reaching down to take off my fur boots. I kind of wanted to wait until we found a movie to watch before I got all comfortable and now that he decided we're gonna watch one of the old Friday the 13th movies, I can get comfy. I pull my boots off my feet and put them on the floor next to the couch. I pull my legs up and tuck them underneath my body. "I've never really seen a scary movie that bothered me enough that I couldn't sleep. I don't really understand how some people can't make the connection that it's just fiction…you know?"

"Some people just don't have that ability I guess." He's busy setting up the DVD player to his living room TV. "Like Iz. She hates scary movies. It's not to the point that she won't watch them because she still will watch em with me. But she hates them. They freak her out real bad…especially demon movies. Movies about possessions and demons and stuff? She won't watch them at all." He shoves the disk in the player and grabs the remote. "Scary movies don't mess with me either though."

"Speaking of…" I lie my head against the back couch cushion and watch while he makes sure the TV is on the station it needs to be on and stuff. "Where is she? Is she working late again?"

"Yeah." He pushes play on the DVD and the movie's previews start. "She was supposed to be home at like 8, but one of the derm attendings called in sick so she has to stay the overnight." He sits down on the opposite end of the couch from me and kicks his feet up on the coffee table. "We've been on opposite schedules for the last couple weeks. If she doesn't get off early or if I don't get out late, we never see each other." It doesn't sound like it bothers him too much but again, I'm not that fluent in speaking Alex's language yet so he very well could be upset I just can't see it.

"That sucks." I lean forward and pick up the can of Pepsi he offered me when we first got here. He offered me another beer but if I drink too much then I'll be all drunk and I don't want Alex to see me drunk. So I just settled for a can of Pepsi instead of a beer. "It's nice that you guys know that you've still got each other even when you don't speak though." I put my Pepsi back down. "How long have you and Izzie been together?" I've been curious about that for a while but I'm just now feeling comfortable enough to ask him.

"Off and on for four and a half years." He says that so fluently and so quickly, he didn't even have to think about it…which surprises me, because usually guys have to think really hard about their anniversaries and birthdays and such. He must really love her to be able to rattle off the exact number right off the bat. "We met when I was an intern. I was 27 and she just turned 28."

"She's older than you?"

"Told you I have a thing for older chicks." He chuckles. "Only by a little bit. Her birthday's on the 28th of June and mine's on the 5th of January…so she's not that much older." He scratches the stubble on his chin and turns towards me. "When's your birthday? I don't think you ever told me…"

"May 5th." I move my hair from the middle of my back and start to watch the movie. "…Do you think you'd be able to survive a scary movie? Like… if you had to be in the scary movie and all that shit was happening to you in real life… do you think you'd be able to survive it?" Some girl just got murdered in the shower with a pickax and the screams sound so fake and edited. I can't believe this movie would be considered "scary" back in the 80s. "I like to think I'm smart enough to survive. You just can't be stupid… like don't split up, don't go places alone and never turn off the lights…those kinds of things."

"I could probably survive it. If you follow the rules like you said, it's not that hard to survive it." He's staring straight forward at the TV, watching as blood is gushing out of this girl's skull. "It kills me when they run into the woods like idiots. Like whatever's in the woods is gonna save them, they go straight for the woods. They don't go for a car or a road or something that'll lead them to people. No, the idiots go straight into the woods."

That makes me laugh because he's so right. "Or wait no, when they run PAST the front door and go downstairs or upstairs. Like why go PAST the front door just to hide in the basement? You deserve to die if you're that fucking dumb."

"Or how about when they fall? The dumb blonde always falls down and breaks her hip or something and she takes ten years to get up. She was running, fell and the killer that's chasing her catches her while he was WALKING. There's no way that should happen. I don't care if you're running with track-star speed, the killer is still gonna catch your dumb ass if you fall."

"I know, right?" I'm looking at him but he's not looking at me. I find myself admiring him. He's so perfect, you know? The way his jawline is carved out the side of his face and the way his eyes are all dark but sparkly in the darkness… he's so perfect. "No, when they shoot the killer one time and expect him to be dead. Stupid asses. Shoot him until there's no more bullets in the damn chamber."

"You have to pass an idiocy test before they let you film a movie, don't you know?" He circles his tongue around the tip of his beer bottle before putting it down. He looks over at me finally and I look away quickly to make it seem like I wasn't just admiring his perfection. He holds his gaze on me for a really long time though. I don't even look him in his eyes. I pretend to be watching the movie. "What color are your eyes, Jo?"

I turn my head when he asks that and wrinkle my brow. "My eyes?" I widen my eyes and squint them like I can actually see them to see what they look like right now when I know damn well I can't see my eyes without a mirror. It's like trying to see my forehead. "They're…brown. Boring, poopy brown." Nobody's ever really asked me about my eyes before. They usually ask me if I've gotten lip injections or hair extensions but never about my eyes. "…Why?"

"I was just wondering. I couldn't tell." He shrugs it off like he just asked me casually about the weather. "And they're not boring brown. They're lighter than any other brown eyes I've ever seen, that's why I asked."

"Oh." I poke my lip out, shrug my shoulders and turn my attention back to the TV. And here I thought he was looking at me… here I thought he actually found something about me that's pretty. I'll just redirect the conversation… "We should like…write a book… about how to survive a scary movie. Name it Alex and Jo's guide to surviving a scary movie." I pull the sleeves of my sweater down and bawl my hands up into fists to hold them in place. "Think it'd sell?"

"Most definitely." To my dismay, he stops looking at me as well and starts to watch the movie. "…Rule number one, don't be blonde. Because if you're blonde, you will fall down and you will die." He grabs his bottle of beer again and takes a quick sip. "Blondes can be so dumb, it's a shame."

"…You're marrying a blonde." I lean forward and pick up my Pepsi. "And aren't blondes your type? You don't go after brunettes, do you?"

"I don't discriminate. If you're hot, you're hot. I do lean towards blondes though, but I don't really mind. I don't care what color your hair is." I think he's done with his beer because he puts the bottle back on the coffee table and leans back comfortably against the couch. "I've met some pretty hot brunettes in my day."

"Yeah I bet." I sigh. "So uh… rule number two." I desperately switch the subject of that conversation because I don't even want to think about if I'm on that list of hot brunettes or not. I'm probably not. I'm so not Alex's type. I can just tell that I'm not. "Don't have sex in the scary movies. If you have sex, you're a prime target and you can pretty much count on being killed while you're in the middle of it."

"Dude, that would suck." His tone is something completely serious which makes me laugh. He's so serious about it. "I'm not even laughing right now…that would seriously suck. Can you imagine being in the middle of some really good sex and just getting killed? Just like that?" I can't even take him seriously right now. I'm too busy laughing. "I'm so serious. That's literally the worst thing I can think of. Like at least let me finish…"

"Well would you rather have blue balls or die?"

"I'd rather die and I'm not joking." I let out the loudest laugh I've ever laughed in my life. "Go 'head and laugh but…" He chuckles to let me know that he finds it funny as well. "Obviously I really wouldn't rather die but blue balls hurts so bad… it's next to death. It hurts so bad…you don't even understand."

"Well I'm a girl, so…"

"So yeah, you wouldn't understand." He rubs his temple like he's stressed or something. "Imagine… imagine if you…" He sighs, frustrated. "Can I ask you a personal question?"

"Since when do you ever ask me if you can ask me a personal question?" I switch the positioning of my legs and put them flat on the floor because my knees are cramping up. "But sure…shoot."

"Do you shave?"

"Yeah? Don't all girls? Only dirty girls don't shave… I'm not a dirtball."

"Well I was just asking because some girls don't. Some girls think it's pointless to shave it so they just leave it natural I didn't wanna assume…"

"OH! You mean… you mean I shave my… oh." I feel my cheeks get hotter as I blush. "Um… I'm not disclosing that information." Of course I shave my crotch. I shave it completely bald…but I'm not gonna tell him that. Why would I tell him that? "Just assume that I do…finish what you were gonna say."

"I was gonna compare it to you cutting yourself shaving but…" He clears his throat, completely ignores the movie and turns to me. I adjust myself so that I'm facing him as well. "You really don't shave?"

"I didn't say that. I didn't say that I do and I didn't say that I don't. I said I'm not gonna tell you cause that's just… weird." I'm smiling so wide and bright but it's more so because I'm nervous and flustered over this conversation. "I'm not discussing the happenings of my vagina with you…"

"You'll tell me you're a squirter but you won't tell me if you shave yourself or not? Logical."

"Oh god." I close my eyes and feel my cheeks get even redder. "That's like me asking you if you shave your balls…I would never expect you to answer that." I cover my face because I'm blushing so damn hard right now. "…Are you one of those guys that care? Some guys don't give a shit but others are real picky about if it's hairy or not…"

"Well it depends." He nods. "If I'm just hittin' it then I don't care… but if you expect me to eat it…I care. I'm not getting hair in my mouth."

"OH MY GOD." I look up at the ceiling with really rosy cheeks. "You are so shallow! If the girl is clean then it shouldn't matter! It shouldn't matter if you're just having sex with her or if you're gonna go down on her. If she's clean then what does it matter? And if you do the job right, you shouldn't get hair in your mouth anyway. You're not biting… you're just licking."

"So why don't you just say it, Jo?" He's smiling just as hard as I am.

"Say what?!" I can't stop smiling… I can't.

"That you don't shave it. Just admit it. You're dropping all these hints that you don't. Just admit that you don't. It won't matter to me… you can just admit it."

"But I'm not saying that." I fold my arms across my chest and try so hard to stop smiling. "I'm not saying if I do or if I don't. It shouldn't matter. I'm not saying it." I comb my fingers through my hair. "….What do you think?"

"Well at first I thought maybe you did because you strike me as the kind of girl that definitely shaves, but now from this conversation, I don't think you do. I don't think you shave it."

"Okay then just keep it to yourself. Use your imagination because I'm not telling you."

"Or I'll just find out."

I turn my head and look at him. "…What did you just say?"

"You heard me." He mumbles that and keeps talking underneath his breath. "You talk a lot of shit that I'm not sure you can back up. It's one thing to talk a good game but…"

"What the hell do you mean?" I know I'm flirting so hard with him right now but he's flirting back and I can't help it. I really can't help myself. "I back all my shit up." I toss a couch pillow at him. "Goodbye Alex…you don't want none of this. Don't get beat up in this living room."

"You think you can beat me? Really? You're like two feet tall and 60 pounds. I wish you would try to beat me up little girl." He throws the couch pillow back at me and I whack him upside the head with it. "Stop playing, Jo!" He yanks the pillow off me and hits me back with it. I grab another one from behind me and slap him with it. "Please don't make me hit you!"

"Hit me then!" I reach across the couch and tap him in the back of his head with my hand. "You won't do anything! You won't do anything!" I keep giving him little bitch-slaps across his face and he's taking it in stride. "Come on, Alex… hit me." I bawl my hand up in a fist and lightly bop him on top of his head. "You're really gonna get beat up by a girl? Shame on you… didn't you wrestle?"

I guess he gets tired of me hitting him because he grabs my hands so quick that I don't have time to react and he pushes me back against the couch so that I'm lying flat down against the cushions. He pins my arms down so I can't move and hovers over me. "What are you gonna do now little girl?" I stick my tongue out because I can't move. "That's what I thought. Stop talking shit like you're six foot, 300 pounds. You'll get beat up." He lets my hands go but doesn't get away from me…he's still hovering. I'm looking up into his eyes and he's looking down into mine and I've never felt so good in my life. _Please just let me kiss you…_

He hasn't blinked yet and neither have I. The two of us are very discreetly in a staring contest. He said that it can't happen again, but… I swear I have to. And I swear this is the last time. I strain my neck and lift my head up and kiss him quickly then pull away. That was so quick that I didn't even get to taste his lips but it was something. I'm not satisfied though, and apparently…neither is he. He lowers his face down to mine, takes my bottom lip between his and sucks on it. I swear I'm melting…

He tangles his fingers inside my hair and I wrap my arms around his neck. I just don't want to break the kiss before I have to. I know he said that this can't keep happening and I agree with that. But how do I stop something that feels so right? How do I restrain myself when I want him this bad? I part my lips to allow his tongue inside my mouth and he accepts my invitation with ease. With his tongue deep in my mouth massaging my tongue, he takes his hands out of my hair and brings them down to my legs. I don't think he's comfortable with the current position we're in because he puts his hands on the backs of my knees and opens my legs so he can lay between them. I know very well that I should tell him to get off me before I do something I'll regret. I know that this is wrong. But how am I to stop him? How do I tell him no when I want this?

I lay my hands flat against the back of his head and stroke his hair while we kiss. I know this won't go any further than kissing so I'm determined to make this worth my while. I just don't understand how this could feel so right? I feel like this is what's supposed to be happening…even though I know I'm in the wrong. His lips are so glossy and smooth, my lips just glide right over them every time he darts his tongue in and out of my mouth. I push my tongue deep into his mouth with the same intense strength and he takes his hand from behind my leg where it was resting and puts it on my jawline as he pulls away. _No… not yet._

Should I start apologizing now? Should I begin by telling him that I'm sorry for kissing him again? Fuck. What did I just do? The last time we kissed he told me we couldn't be friends anymore. He generously gave me a second chance and I just fucked up again. Damn. My arms are still wrapped around his neck and even though he stopped kissing me, he hasn't pulled back enough for me to look him in his eye yet. I take my arms away from his neck and slide them down his biceps all the way to his forearms. He holds himself up with his muscles flexed in a push-up position. We're still lying pelvis to pelvis with each other and I'm a little bit hypnotized by the fact that I can feel him against me…and he's hard.

I bend my knees while he's still between my legs and move my hands back to his head. His face is still down, almost level with my collarbone and he's not looking at me. I want to let him know that I'm sorry but at the same time I'd still like to be his friend if that's even possible at this point, so out of care, I stroke my fingers through his soft, fluffy brown hair softly. I would love to be able to play with his hair while he's lying on top of me all the time. I would kill to switch places with his fiancée for just an hour. I swear I'd treat him like a king for that hour.

He sighs and picks his head up while I'm rubbing his hair but instead of pulling away to tell me that we have to stop like I was expecting him to, he resumes to kiss me. _YES… _I open my mouth and he kisses me so harshly and so roughly that my head smashes back into the couch cushion. I need to pull back to breathe but he's not even letting me do that. He's kissing me like he's been starving and my mouth is the only source of food…hungrily. My hands are still in his hair but I don't rub his hair anymore, I grip it to let him know that I'm just as hungry for this as he is. He takes his lips away from my mouth and goes immediately, without hesitation to my neck. _Oh god no… don't do that. _

His tongue prods the space right underneath my chin as he drifts over towards my ear and down towards my chest. I roll my eyes to the back of my head and take a breath because I can't breathe. I'm so ready for him…in more ways than one. Mentally, I want him worse than I've ever wanted anything in my entire life. Physically, my body's ready for him as well. He's driving me crazy and making me so, so wet. In fact, I think my underwear are sticking to me. He softens his lips into a soft "O" shape and starts sucking on my neck. I bite my lip… he really has to stop before this goes further. I can feel the fact that he's already given me a hickey…I know he has. I take another sharp breath when he moves his mouth up to my earlobe. God…how does he know? How does he know what gets me going?

And to match what's going on between my legs, I feel him stiffening more and more by the second while he's working my neck with his mouth. I bite my lip so hard that if I don't cool it, it'll bleed. I wonder how he's faring with this…

**Alex's Point of View.**

First and foremost, she smells so…freaking…good. I don't even think it's perfume that's making her smell so good either because it's like the scent is embedded in her skin. I can always tell by a girl's scent whether she's clean or not and yeah, she's clean. She also has the softest skin I've ever felt in my entire life. Every single part of her is soft; her arms, her hands, her neck, her lips… her lips are soft as hell. I don't want to do this but I'm afraid at this point that stopping isn't an option. I'm way too curious about her to stop now. I just need to see what she's like. Like I said, she talks a real good game so I can't help but wonder if she really can back it up. Is this girl as perfect as she seems? Because from what I've been shown so far, Jo has no flaws. I can't find one single flaw on her body and I've been looking.

At this point she's probably thinking that I want to stop because again, I know Jo and it's not hard to tell how she thinks for the most part. She probably thinks that I don't want to do this and I plan on cutting off the friendship when this is over but that's not true. I don't want to stop just as much as I assume that she doesn't want to stop. I lower myself down on top of her body so that I'm lying flat against her, but I'm careful that I don't put all my weight on her because she's so much tinier than what I'm used to. I keep my face smashed inside the crook of her neck, inhaling her scent while I'm kissing her neck.

I slide my hands up underneath her shirt but keep them on her stomach. Damn, even her stomach is soft. Her skin is so smooth and blemish-free that it's unreal. She's lying flat against the couch with her hands on the back of my head and her hips stick out when she lies down. Her stomach is flat and I can tell that her thinness is natural. I wrap my hands around her hips and rub the indentations of them with my thumbs. I don't care anymore; this is going to happen whether I want it to happen or not. It's gonna happen sooner or later anyway…why not now? Even though I don't want to, I take my hands off her hips for a second and pull my shirt over my head. Her eyes are squinted like she can't bear with what's going on and she bites her lip when I'm shirtless. I think she caught the drift of the fact that I'm not gonna stop tonight because she leans up and pulls me back down on top of her.

I toss my shirt on the floor and kiss her lips again. Aggressively, she takes the lead on this kiss and sucks on my bottom lip so hard that it goes numb for a second. From the day that I started to get to know her up until now, there's always been so much tension between the two of us. I'm tired of acting like there's nothing between us. It's tiring and frankly, I find it easier to just have sex with her at this point than to act like it's never gonna happen. I grab the rim of her sweater and pull on it to let her know that I want it off. She sits up without breaking our kiss and allows me to pop her sweater off over her head and toss it on the floor. Her bra is pink and lacy with white lace trim around it. Like her hair is a big inconvenience to her, she reaches back with her hands and makes it so it's behind her and out of the way.

I can't wait any longer, so I put my face down to her chest and plant soft kisses in the crease between her boobs. Is it bad how right this feels? It feels so right to be doing this with her. It doesn't even feel wrong… I stick my tongue out and trace the visible skin of her boobs with it. I can hear her breathing becoming uneven but I can also tell that she's trying to control it. She reaches up and runs her fingers through her own hair with a low, monotonous gasp. She does everything so poised and perfectly…I wonder what she sounds like when she's moaning.

I've never been good with unstrapping bras so rather than fight with the clasp in the back; I pull her bra down as much as I can so that her boobs are coming out the top of it. I cup the left one with my hand and massage it, wasting no time occupying the right one with my mouth. I don't know why I'm surprised by the perfection of her boobs. I swear I already established that everything on this girl is handcrafted perfection…so why am I surprised that her boobs are perfect as well? They're not very big but they're honestly very far from small; they're big enough to satisfy me. Her nipples are in perfect proportion to her boobs. They're small enough to fit completely in my mouth.

I tease her nipple with the flattened end of my tongue which makes her take a deep, unsteady breath. I hear her mumble the word "fuck" to herself but the voice she said it with was a voice that suggested she might've wanted to moan instead. I move on to her left one, replacing my tongue on the right one with my hand. As if I needed anymore reassurance that she is clean, her boobs taste like soap. It's not a horrifying soapy taste, it's just very faint and dull…enough to let me know that she probably just washed before coming here. They smell like soap too.

I cup my hands around both her boobs and knead them while I deftly circle around her nipples with my tongue. She violently drags her fingers through my hair, leans down and kisses all over my head. Just by that gesture of her kissing me, I can tell that she's enjoying the hell out of herself. Honestly, I'm bored with her chest and I'd much rather find out what between her legs is like but I want to take things slow with her. I don't know why but I feel like I owe it to her to be slow and make sure she's comfortable and stuff. I don't think that Peckwell made her feel special and she is…you know? Not saying that I'm gonna be slow forever, because I probably won't be. If this actually escalates to sex tonight, I can't promise that I'm gonna be slow…I'll probably end up going so hard that I'll be out of breath by the first five minutes because I would…I REALLY would love nothing more than to make Jo scream. But I just feel like foreplay is the least I can do with her. I don't even know if she's wet yet. Maybe I should check that out…

I don't move my mouth away from her chest; I just stop massaging the one that's not occupied by my mouth and slide my hand down her stomach. I slide my thumb inside the top part of her pants to open them up to make it easier for me to get my hand in them. She doesn't seem to care that I'm moving from her chest to between her legs. In fact, she parts her legs a little bit more for me. I think she's wearing a thong because I don't feel her underwear covering her completely. They slim out the deeper between her legs I go. Yeah, it's definitely a thong.

Using the same tactic I used to get inside her pants, I slip my thumb down the front of her underwear first and I don't feel anything. I was expecting to feel a little bit of fuzz because we pretty much established the fact that she doesn't shave earlier. I already wrapped my head around the fact that her not shaving would be the only flaw I could find on her body, but she really never ceases to amaze me. I kiss her on her neck, sliding my entire hand down the front of her thong and listen to her breathing, which is still a bit unsteady. She's completely bald…it's smooth as a baby's bare ass. "Thought you said you didn't shave…"

"I…" She struggles for a minute to form a sentence without having to take a breath. I'm not inside her yet… I'm just rubbing my hand around it to get her even wetter than she already is. She licks her lips and sighs like she needs to moan really badly. "I never said that…" She's so petite and tiny but her thighs are super soft, warm and thick. I glide my hand further between her legs and caress the inner parts of her thighs. It doesn't make me any sense how soft every single part of her body is. I feel like my hands and my mouth are gliding across smooth velvet. She takes the break in my rubbing between her legs to sit up and unclasp her bra. I pull it off with the hand that's not between her legs and throw it on the floor along with her sweater and my shirt.

She doesn't lay back down flat against the couch though. She allows me to keep my hand between her legs but she sits up and starts fumbling around with the button to my jeans. When she unbuttons them and starts to unzip them, I dig my hand a little bit deeper between her legs and tease her around the outside for a second, making sure she's wet enough so that when I decide to push a finger in, it'll go in with ease. I notice she closes her eyes for a moment too long and bites her lip before she continues to slowly move her hand inside my pants. Her hands skillfully move along me, tracing my erection through my boxer shorts.

I lean forward and plant a soft, tender kiss on her neck. I know what I'm about to do to her, so I don't take my lips away from her neck; I keep my mouth there remaining still with my lips pressed neatly against her throat, breathing a breath here and there against her skin. Below her waist I gradually start to ease my single middle finger inside of her, eliciting a quiet gasp from her. Just like I expected her to, she stops touching me for a second as her breathing hiccups and she tilts her head back. She hasn't uttered anything above a slight whisper yet but if I have it my way, she'll be screaming in a little while. I don't move my finger in and out as usual; instead, I move it back and forth just to get her used to it. She's so wet that she's literally dripping down my hand.

She entirely stops playing around with me. In its place, she wraps her arms around my neck, parting her legs and taking my one, single finger deep. She buries her face in my neck and squeezes me tight like she's giving me a hug but I know that she's just doing it to cope with the fact that it's feeling good. She's breathlessly gasping in my ear and it's like music to me. I love hearing how I'm making her feel. I feel her teeth dragging against my neck while she's mumbling a couple swear words under her breath, which makes me smirk. Her hips are bucking towards me in a forward-backward motion like she's really, really enjoying this.

I can't deal with foreplay anymore. I want her so bad at this point. I don't even want her anymore; I need her. Even though she's really getting off with just my finger, I slide it out and hook my fingers on the rim of her pants. She knows what I want because she unwraps her arms from around my neck and helps me out. I grab her pants and her underwear at the same time and pull them both down. She lies down flat again and lifts her hips up so I can take her pants and underwear off. I toss them on the floor with the rest of our clothes and take a minute to just admire her perfectly naked body while she's lying in front of me, propped up on her elbows.

Her tons and tons of silky brunette hair is evenly distributed between being behind her back and clustered around her chest. Every part of her body is perfectly proportionate and a perfect reflection of everything I thought she'd look like naked. Her skin is off-white and cream-colored with little flecks of brown scattered all over her. She has beauty marks all over her body and for some reason, I find them incredibly sexy. I really like the one on her chest, directly above her right boob though. I guess she notices that I'm just staring at her because she grabs ahold of the rim of my pants and yanks on them. I was too busy admiring her body to realize that I'm not even naked yet.

I help her out and take the remainder of my clothes off, putting them logically on the floor. I'm assuming that the movie that was on the TV is over by now because the living room just went dark and I can only make out the shadows of her body. She doesn't have any trouble finding me in the darkness though; she places her hands flat on my back and pulls me down on top of her. I take one of my hands and use it to hold myself so that I can guide it inside when I'm ready. She hungrily forces my lips against hers and gives me a near desperate, passionate kiss. I slowly, carefully… push the tip and just the tip, of my erection… inside of her. She stops kissing me immediately when I do that and her mouth just drops.

I pull back and look at her face. Her eyes are closed and her eyebrows are twisted in a way that could suggest that she's in some degree of pain. Her mouth is open but not very wide…just wide enough for me to see the bottom of her teeth. I'm not sure if her expression means pain or pleasure so just to be careful, I go really slow and gentle as I ease the rest of myself deep inside her. I could just ask her if I'm hurting her but I'm not sure that she'd answer. She hasn't said a word to me since before I started fingering her. I'm still not sure if she's uncomfortable or not, so the first thrust I make inside of her is a slow one. She brings one of her hands up and covers her face with it as she muffles a moan. Okay, I'm not hurting her. I grab onto her hips to brace myself and draw my pelvis back as far as I can without slipping out of her. She takes her hand away from her face and as soon as she does, I make a really hard, deep thrust back inside and that makes her moan louder. "Ohhh…" _Are you kidding me? Even her moan is perfect?_

I can't even lie about this. She's everything I thought she'd be and more and I haven't even gotten started yet. She's so tight that I can barely slide in and out, she's dripping wet and her moan is the prettiest thing I've ever even heard. This is exactly how I thought it would be…maybe better.

**Jo's Point of View.**

I don't know when but sometime in doing all of this, I shut my brain off. I was seriously contemplating on stopping him and telling him no after he fingered me because I know this is so wrong and I know for a fact that I'm gonna regret this. I'm gonna hate myself for doing this but I just… I need this, you know? I need to know what I'm missing when it comes to Alex. I need to know that I had a chance and I didn't waste it, if that makes any sense. I don't know when I became someone's second choice but I'm coming second in Alex's life which is better than being nothing to him. Like I said, I don't know when it happened, but I managed to shut my brain off and stop thinking about all of that and I'm just going with it. I don't have any common sense or good judgment, remember?

I'm having the hardest time catching my breath. He's not going fast but he's thrusting so hard that I can't even keep up in my mind and I canNOT stop moaning, which isn't like me. Usually I can control my screaming/moaning/groaning/gasping but for some reason, he robbed me of that. I can't control myself. "Ahhhhhh…" He's holding me still by bracing himself using my hips so I literally don't have any other choice but to lie still while he's going so…incredibly…hard. "Oh god…" I dig my nails deep into his back and drag them to deal with the fact that I'm gonna… "Uhhh….oh god… oh my god…" I know scratching his back is a NO because that's gonna leave evidence but I can't help myself.

I want him deeper though. I want to be able to feel him so deep…I want to remember this. I hold him against my body and wrap my legs around his waist. His face is in the crook of my neck and his tongue is sliding all over my neck while he's drawing back and thrusting inside me at an even, rough pace. I curl my fingers through his hair and moan into his shoulder blade. He's grunting while he's thrusting which just means that he's going so hard. I scratch his back again and something inside me just… snaps. It's a shame that I know that scratching backs is a bad thing to do during sex, because it's not the first time that I've had sex with a taken man… Dammit Jo.

Don't get me wrong. I'm enjoying the hell out of this. But I feel so lousy. I feel horrible. I don't want to be expendable to him. I don't want this to be sex. I want this to be love and I know it's not. I didn't think that having sex with him would make him love me or feel for me in the same way I feel for him but I wasn't expecting it to make me feel this shitty. I just don't want to do this anymore. I wanna go home. I don't want this anymore.

This is never gonna happen again. This is a one-time thing and I'm actually nothing more than someone to lay over to him. He has a fiancée that he loves and if he didn't have me tonight, he would've just had her tomorrow. I'm nothing to him. I can't do this anymore. But I can't tell him how I feel because he'll just yell at me for "thinking that this is more than what it is" and we'll end up not speaking again and I don't want that. I'm loving every second of this… I haven't had sex this good in a while. But I really just want this to be over. "…Alex?" I whisper. I close my eyes and purse my lips so tears won't come out. I don't think he heard me…

I'm so damn worthless. Why can't I ever get with someone that loves me? Why can't I be like most normal people and be with a man that cares about me and loves me and doesn't just want sex from me? I wonder what that's like. What's it like to have sex with someone that loves you? What's it like to be with someone that thinks you're beautiful and not just sexy? I just want him. I want him to be with me and only me and I want him to want me as much as I want him and I want him to see me as ME and not just someone that he's having sex with. I want him to care about me…

I don't want to do this anymore… but I'm gonna stick it out at least until he finishes.


End file.
